THE PILLOW BOOK (1995)
A Review by Matthew K. Gold The Book-Lover's Guide to Cinema http://www.panix.com/~mgold/meter.htm Copyright 1998 Matthew K. Gold
Words Made Flesh
Peter Greenaway's THE PILLOW BOOK, a lush, spell-like movie, weaves together words, flesh, ink, paper, and celluoid. The main character, a young Chinese woman (Vivian Wu) whose father wrote a poem on her face on every childhood birthday, grows up with a fetish for words written on bare skin. At first, she looks for lovers who will write on her; later, one lover (Ewan McGregor) convinces her to inscribe her masterpiece (a series of "books" based on a thousand-year old volume that lists things which "make the heart beat faster") on his body.
THE PILLOW BOOK is as disturbing as it is pretty. It provocatively draws analogies between human skin and paper and entrances the viewer's eyes with beautiful, breathtaking imagery, but it also displays human bodies as denatured objects. Naked bodies (particularly McGregor's well endowed naked body) litter the screen, which can be either liberating or cruel, depending on how one understands Greenaway's use of the human form.
Greenaway's distinctive style is a postmodern cinematic expression of the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system: multiple scenes float freely across the screen like lost ships drifting on celluoid winds. It's an Altman-like concept of cinema seen through the eyes rather than heard through the ears. Words spill across all of the images like misplaced subtitles written with a calligraphy pen.
Sensual and enticing, but ultimately problematic, THE PILLOW BOOK is a unique vision of immoral beauty.
Rating (1-5): 4.0 7/18/97 © Matthew K. Gold 1997
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