The Pillow Book
The Pillow Book
NC-17 | 06 June 1997 (USA)
The Pillow Book Trailers

A woman with a body writing fetish seeks to find a combined lover and calligrapher.

Reviews
Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!
Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.
jvanderwalt5 This movie is one of the great arts movies Ewan Mcgreggor ever made.The story starts slow and in the beginning you are going to wonder if your watching the rite movie.Its a very unique film by Peter Greenaway and its also filmed in a very strange way.Some of the scenes are in black and white but the rest is in colour.Ita also a multi lingual film including :English, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, FrenchInbetween the most beautiful french love songs are sung which accompanies the "pillow book" scenes very wellAlthough this film contains a lot of nudity both male and female it should not be viewed for that reason but for the art of it.This is definitely a movie you must see if you love indie artsy movies.Like i said its filmed very strangely but once you get the drift is amazing8/10 deserved.
gavin6942 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.I had no idea what to expect from this film, as it does not seem to be fairly well known, and a title like "Pillow Book" does not give a clear indication. What we have is pure art, captured on film. The calligraphy is gorgeous, even if I am unable to read it. And just the way the film is shot.What will stand out for many people is the large amount of male nudity. Ewan McGregor is naked for quite a bit of the film, and he is not alone (though he is the only "name" actor). This was a brave, bold decision, although it likely caused the film to be released in fewer theaters than it should have been.
Armand A movie-book. The lecture like gesture of a religion, the signs like guides in a world of every beginning. Art like sin and the human body or the paper -same material of same rite. The nudity is not relevant, The search of perfection, love like sacrifice and the gift of a new Cassandra. Tale of escape, soft "Salo", "Pillow Book" is the mark of love's bones and the price of secret. Only character in this movie is only a instrument of art. Nagiko is himself a page, and the relation with Jerome is creation's act of the necessary book. So, freedom is utopia, hope- only mask, the letters- heats of seconds who wait the victim. A huge library is this movie in which lights, gestures and intentions are the bread of the mythical animal who lived in everyone.
Brown Mouse Bob Visually cluttered, plot less, incredibly mind-numbing rubbish. Not even close to Greenaway's better work. Avoid at all costs!The overlapping 'split screen' effects do nothing more than confuse, the film is very dark for a lot of the time and the 'artistic' composing of images is pretentious in the extreme.There is absolutely nothing to recommend about this film; even the nudity is incredibly unerotic, which seeing it fills a large part of the film soon gets very boring.Plus, how anyone can say that the acting of Ewen MacGregor is brilliant is beyond me. He showed more ability in the Star Wars series, and that's saying something.I've not been so unimpressed with a film since I saw 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People'!