THE PILLOW BOOK
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
"I need writing," insists the beautiful Japanese woman Nagiko (Vivian Wu) to a stranger in the cafe. "Don't ask why. Just take out your pen and write on my arm." And rest of her body as well.
Nagiko's obsession is finding a calligrapher who is as good a lover as a calligrapher, and for her, skin is the medium of choice. ("I like the smell of paper - all kinds," she confides in her diary, called a pillow book. "It reminds me of the scent of skin.")
Peter Greenaway's audacious assault on our senses is called simply THE PILLOW BOOK. Greenway is a cinematic stylist whose best known film is perhaps the movie with the enormous title of THE COOK THE THIEF HIS WIFE & HER LOVER. (Yes, he did not allow commas to impede his thought.)
Greenway in recent interviews has been railing against the power and the homogeneity of American movies. His films are certainly like no others. In THE PILLOW BOOK, which he wrote, directed, and co-edited, he creates a sumptuous movie in montage. Most scenes make heavy use of picture-in-picture techniques, thus making the movie screen look like some feature laden television. Part of the film is shot in letterbox with a larger black band at the bottom holding the English subtitles. This asymmetric letterboxing is a projectionist's nightmare. Ours almost got tricked.
The bizarre story can be followed if you pay close attention, but it is merely a sideshow. The movie exists to show off calligraphy on skin as an art form and to dazzle the viewers with sights and sounds. The best part of the film is the music by Brian Eno. A mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and French music. All of it has a haunting beauty. The French folk songs have subtitles that flow by sing-a-long style in order to focus the audience on the music.
The story is a conundrum but with periodically interesting vignettes. The reoccurring one, which various characters repeat, tells an ancient legend of God making clay models. "If God approved of his creation, he brought each clay model to life by signing his own name." >From this comes the tradition of writing on people's torsos.
Most scenes are off the scale, any scale. Typical is the one where Nagiko's lover Jerome, played by Ewan McGregor from EMMA and TRAINSPOTTING, has a solution for Nagiko for the publisher who is ignoring her. Nagiko will write her book all over Jerome, and he will go to the publisher and strip so the publisher can see the beauty of her writing. It gets even more ludicrous once Jerome gets naked in the publisher's office.
The film sets a record for the number of shots of male frontal nudity in a non-pornographic film. None of the scenes are erotic and only a few are meant to be.
Besides the ridiculous story, the movie's other problem is the acting. The actors do not try to be convincing, and the director seems happy to have them all on autopilot. He approaches the film stock as a canvas upon which he will paint a beautiful and shocking portrait. Narrative has little importance to him.
THE PILLOW BOOK would make a wonderful short film. Trimmed down to twenty or thirty minutes, I could easily praise it. As is, it becomes an incredibly long exercise in style.
THE PILLOW BOOK runs an exhausting 2:06. It is not rated but would probably be NC-17 as it contains large amounts of complete nudity as well as explicit sex and one scene of drug abuse. The film is in English, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitling where appropriate. Although I was impressed by parts of the filmmaking, I cannot recommend the picture. I give it ** for its impressive and unusual sights and sounds.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: June 5, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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