GREENAWAY'S PILLOW BOOK
[Spoilers]
A film review by Froilan Vispo
Copyright 1996 Froilan Vispo
Someone had made a post days ago seeking info on a Peter Greenaway, who I do not know, and yesterday there was an enthusiastic post on THE PILLOW BOOK by Peter Greenaway (DROWNING BY NUMBERS, THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER, PROSPERO'S BOOKS) which I had seen last September, so here's my contribution on Greenaway and his latest film.
THE PILLOW BOOK is about a young Japanese fashion model, Nagito (Vivian Wu), with a predilection for writing on skin. Attention-getting premise, to be sure, with lots of erotic and symbolic potential. The film brings together two intimacies: the knowledge of the lover's skin with the revelations of the personal diary, for the knowledge of another's thoughts is intimacy itself.
The film takes its title from a diary of random observations, organized under headings similar to "Annoying Things" or "Things We Love," which were recounted and written at the bedside by its author, a Japanese lady of the court. Nagito will write her own pillow book, and the film follows the painful completion of hers.
Our protagonist's father was himself a writer on skin as well as an author, often writing on Nagito's skin when she was a child with a calligraphy brush, chanting the same phrase again and again, something like "...and He made her out of clay, and He took up His brush, and painted in her eyes, her breasts, and her sex. And then He painted in her name, so that she will not forget." (It has been awhile since I've seen this film, so any corrections/reminders, such as our protagonist's name, as well as opinions, are invited.)
Nagito grows up and makes a bad marriage. Then, like her father, she also attempts to write, at the same time struggling (as all artists must, it seems) to make a living, until she is discovered (as all supermodels are, it seems) and becomes a fashion model whose dalliances are much sought after by papparazzi.
Like her father, Nagito makes another mistake - she gets into the publisher's bed, in a way (and here lies another twist that will remain unrevealed). You see, she had met this publisher's translator and lover, Jerome (Ewan MacGregor), earlier and had judged his sexual potential to be poor based on his calligraphic ability. But Jerome becomes her means of getting her own books noticed. How? By bedding him and writing her manuscript on the Jerome's skin for his publisher/lover to read and eventually, obsess, over.
One more mistake - she falls for the Jerome and the rest of the film sees her struggle to complete her contractual obligation to her publisher for the possession of the most-prized pillow book of all (see details after the SPOILER warning below) - one that truly combines thought and touch and remembrance of past love.
I very much wanted to like this movie but it failed on several points.
If you like Greenaway's usual lush art direction, there's much to watch here. Too much, in fact. At several points smaller screens are inlaid along the edges of the main one, each filled with its own images, so either you twist your neck making glances or your eyes are drawn to the peripheries concentrating on nothing. Either way you are left with nothing but fragments. Showing far more than can be possibly observed becomes a poor excuse for seeing any movie again, and the interest wasn't there to warrant a second viewing of TPB.
There is Nagito's own writing. If her writing wasn't up to publication standards the first time around, how does it become more worthy of publication or obsession when written on the publisher's lover's skin? It's too gimmicky and backfires on our protagonist, and I would be willing to forgive on this point if we were given adequate proof of our Nagito's skills, but we are given little, and the hints offered weren't exactly enthralling.
The story becomes a tiring game of one-upsmanship at the end, a movie revolving around a gimmick. In DROWNING BY NUMBERS the story progresses along with the counting of numbers one to one hundred, sometimes appearing where unexpected. Here, again and again, love-poems written on bodies are offered, and with each new one we are asked to play a guessing-game with Greenaway playing the braggart who offers us no choice but to endure this display of cleverness.
This is not the first time I came out of a Greenaway film disappointed. I recall being infuriated by THE COOK, THE THIEF..., all that pomp and ceremony adorning a bad joke masquerading as a plot. What disappoints more is that with his undeniable intelligence, with all his daring and virtuoso art direction, the narrative and characterizations end up neglected, and sadly this is true for TPB.
Surprisingly, for a film with so much erotic potential, there was very little of it, if any at all, in the actual movie. With so little to relate to, we end up playing the role of the uncaring voyeur. Greenaway cares enough to make us pay attention, but makes no effort to make us care.
I was willing to be seduced, was almost awed into submission by the visual glory of it all, but ended the film discovering that I had played the role of the unsatisfied lover who is all too aware of "what might have been, what might have been." No, I didn't rush up and out of the theatre after a film to work away with my paintbrushes with glee. Instead, months later, I type away at my keyboard venting my frustration with Greenaway's flashes of genius. If only he could keep it up for an entire movie....
Jerome dies and a grieving Nagito is inspired to write her masterwork on the dead Jerome's skin. The publisher, by now obsessed over Nagito's writings, then has Jerome's body stolen and flayed for possession of the script-laden skin.
Like THE COOK..., the dead male lover becomes the object of obsession and literally the book - in TC... the lover dies by ingestion of book leaves while in TPB the skin is adorned by love poems.
Froilan
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