The Pillow Book

A film built between writing and skin. Nagiko's father is a writer. When she was small he wrote a wish on her face with a brush on every birthday. On the same day she sees the relationship between her father and his publisher. The man demands a price for printing the books. Nagiko grows up. She marries, her husband dislikes writing, she leaves the house and goes to Hong Kong. A search begins there. She wants a man who will be both lover and calligrapher, and nobody can do both. She meets Jerome. He is a translator; his hand is poor but he makes an offer: let him be the pen and Nagiko the paper. From there the film turns into a story of revenge. Nagiko will write thirteen books and every one of them will be written on a human body. The target is her father's publisher. The books are sent to him one by one and each is a chapter. What the narrative is interested in is not love but ownership: who the writing belongs to, who prints it, and whose page a body is, are asked again and again. The source is a text written a thousand years ago. Passages from Sei Shonagon's court notebook run inside the film and accompany the present-day story. The form is dense. The screen divides, frames open inside frames, black and white is used beside colour, and writing is laid directly over the image. Vivian Wu, Ewan McGregor, Yoshi Oida and Ken Ogata are in the cast. Peter Greenaway wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes cinema that plays with form and sits close to painting. Who it is not for: anyone who avoids disturbing material; the nudity is constant and the ending contains a hard scene involving a body.