In Kyoto in the 1970s, a calligrapher delicately writes a greeting on his daughter's face on her birthday. When she becomes a woman, the daughter Nagiko remembers the event with excitement and searches hard to find an ideal calligrapher-lover to use her whole body as his paper. In Hong Kong she meets Jerome, an English translator who convinces her that she should be the pen and not the paper - she should write on his body and he will carry her writing on his skin to a publisher. The plan works too well. Both lovers become jealous of each other, she of the publisher, he because she impatiently writes on the bodies of other men. In a bid to win Nagiko back, Jerome fakes his own suicide which results in his death. Nagiko grieves, writes a handsome erotic poem on Jerome's corpse and buries him. The publisher exhumes Jerome's body,and flays his skin to make a precious pillow-book of Nagiko's text. The woman is horrified. She schemes to persuade the publisher to relinquish the book of her lover's skin by sending him handsome calligraphed young men, the last of whom becomes the publisher's executioner. The pillow-book of Jerome is returned to Nagiko and she lays it to rest in the soil of a bonsai tree.
Film Crew
- : Peter Greenaway
- : Peter Greenaway
- : Sei Shonagon
- : Sacha Vierny
- : Koji Tatsuno
- : Kees Kasander
- : Denis Wigman
- : Tom Reeve
- : Jean-Louis Piel
- : Terry Glinwood
- : Hiroto Oonogi
- : Wilbert Van Dorp
- : Noriyuki Tanaka
- : Andrée Putman
- : Willemijn Loivers
- : Garth Marshall
- : Koichi Hamamura
- : Chris Wyatt
- : Peter Greenaway
- : Martin Margiela
- : Dien van Straalen
Technical Information
- Couleur
- English
Images
Videos
Bande annonce
A master calligrapher's daughter searches for a writer to use her body as a canvas. Instead she finds a man who convinces her to tell her story using his body.-
''The Pillow Book'' finds the filmmaker at his most atypically seductive, creating a spellbinding web of cruel elegance and intricate gamesmanship, exploring the exotic, haunting beauty of the bizarre.
Janet Maslin, The New York Times -
A lavish, sensual and endlessly fascinating film that almost fetishes fetishism, this is provocative in every sense.
Film 4 -
Greenaway, a former painter, crafts a sumptuous canvas of words and images, colours and split-screen inserts, turning his camera into a paintbrush.
Jamie Russell, Total Film
