The Pillow Book

In the tenth century, Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting at the Imperial Court, wrote her Pillow Book: a collection of amorous adventures, memories and literary quotations, far removed from the literary tradition at the time. Greenaway’s The Pillow Book is just as far from mainstream cinematographic traditions. It is ‘Ciné CD-Rom’, as a French journal called it. Nagiko, played by Vivian Wu, cherishes her memories of birthdays from her youth, when her father calligraphed traditional greetings on her face. She marries a man who understands nothing of her love for literature and letters. When he burns her diaries, she flees to Hong Kong, where she becomes a successful model. She takes a series of calligraphing lovers and derives a great deal of pleasure from texts written on her body. Then she falls in love with Jerome, a young Englishman who convinces her that she should not be the paper but the pen. Jerome shows his fully penned body to his male lover, who is the one who published work by Nagiko’s father. The publisher is delighted and a fatal troillism ensues.The Pillow Book is very unconventional in its use of film techniques, a mix of colour and black & white, pictures within and over pictures. The wonderful soundtrack and the beautiful calligraphy help to make it a spectacular experience for eyes and ears that more that compensates the viewer for the effort Greenaway expects of them.