The Pillow Book (film)
The Pillow Book is a film by director Peter Greenaway (also wrote the screenplay), United Kingdom, 1996.
Synopsis
A Japanese born model in Hong Kong, Nagiko (Vivian Wu) seeks a lover who can match her desire for carnal pleasure with her admiration for poetry and calligraphy. The roots of this obsession lie in her youth, when her father (Ken Ogata) would write characters of good fortune on her face. In an Englishman, Jerome (Ewan McGregor), she finds the partner with whom she can share her physical and her poetic passion, using each other's body as tablets for their art.
Nagiko then hatches a plan to use the bodies of the Englishman and her other (would be) lovers to exact revenge upon her father's publisher, who dishonoured her father with demands of homesexual favours in exchange for publication. However, the plan goes awry and leaves everybody unhappy.
Review
The film is all but conventional and offers spectacular imagery sometimes to the detriment of the story. It is a bit paradoxical that a film about calligraphy and the human body impresses more with its colours, backgrounds and artful camera work than with the tale it tells. The actrice Vivian Wu, is the only one who stands out as a whole person, while all others remain decorations in an, admittedly admirable, 2-hour, rollercoaster of images, screens within screens, a kaleidoscope of writing-related symbolism that may please, but also confuse.