As a young girl in Japan, Nagiko's father paints characters on her face, and her aunt reads to her from "The Pillow Book", the diary of a 10th-century lady-in-waiting. Nagiko grows up, obsessed with books, papers, and writing on bodies, and her sexual odyssey (and the creation of her own Pillow Book) is a "parfait mélange" of classical Japanese, modern Chinese, and Western film images.... (Full plot summary below)
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As a young girl in Japan, Nagiko's father paints characters on her face, and her aunt reads to her from "The Pillow Book", the diary of a 10th-century lady-in-waiting. Nagiko grows up, obsessed with books, papers, and writing on bodies, and her sexual odyssey (and the creation of her own Pillow Book) is a "parfait mélange" of classical Japanese, modern Chinese, and Western film images.
Leave your thoughts about The Pillow Book.
| Chicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonGreenaway is a dedicated aesthete and sensualist who creates his own little worlds of cruelty, delight and artistic trickery. With tremendous brio and skill, he cuts his patterns into our minds, tickling our skins with his brush. |
| South Florida Sun-SentinelRod DreherPillow Book may be a dull, heartless, cruel film, but for what it's worth, it looks marvelous. |
| CNN.comPaul TataraThe Pillow Book is obsessed with obsessive erotic obsessiveness. If you've ever trembled at the thought of having Japanese characters painted on your nude body, this is the film for you. Bring a lunch; it feels like it'll never end. |
| SPLICEDWireRob BlackwelderEven with Greenaway's focus on visual fabric, his characters are intricate and the performances richly layered. |
| Film.comAlice SmithFinally the film just isn't very interesting, let alone engaging, and, at its worst, is simply too silly to appreciate on even a visual level. |
| Chicago ReaderLisa AlspectorOne of the most accomplished chapters in Peter Greenaway's quest to turn movies into books, this may be the writer-director's metaphorical autobiography. |
| People MagazineLeah RozenGreenaway provides a visual feast, then he kills your appetite. |
| TheMovieReport.comMichael DequinaNever less than mesmerizing, even when you're not exactly sure what exactly Greenaway is trying to say. |
| Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)Ken HankeBoth exhilarating and exhausting, The Pillow Book is undeniably bold, sometimes beautiful, filmmaking. |
| rec.arts.movies.reviewsDavid N. ButterworthPenises come in all shapes and sizes, and such is the preponderance of penises on parade in "The Pillow Book" that sitting through it feels like watching "Multiplicity" with Harvey Keitel in the lead. |
