Miller Analogy Test: Occasionally cold is to Antarctica as Occasionally obsessional is to Peter Greenaway. This film goes way beyond being a study in art form and the blending of body and calligraphy -- the detour into Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder-land morphs into a permanent trip to the insane asylum. Let's consider the repetitive elements: Body calligraphy starting from the first scene that reoccurs year by year, and later in more modern life, day-by-day; the picture-in-picture techniques; the subtitled translations; the various books that appear in many guises. This is fractal film making where the larger image is actually repeated copies in ever smaller form without boundaries, without any consideration outside of art, form, and the pure expression of sensuality (in all senses, but particularly vision and touch). // I suspect I'm one of the few people giving this movie a mid-rating. Except to observe a tour-de-force of a singular obsession, I can't imagine why one would voluntarily see the whole movie.

This film is about a Japanese woman who has an obsession with calligraphy on skin.The plot is absolutely bizarre. I fail to see any "sensual" or "erotic" undertones. The plot turns an ancient art form into a fetishistic pornography. In addition, the scenes that are filmed in Hong Kong are certainly portraying bad parts of Hong Kong, such as the airport in the middle of the city, poor living conditions and noise pollution. Throughout the whole film, I keep thinking that "The Pillow Book" is insulting the Japanese culture and the Hong Kong environment."The Pillow Book" is a perverted, yet boring film. Seriously stay away from it.

A beautiful Japanese broad gets off on body-writing. This is certainly not the way Greenway would have put it, but it pretty much captures the essence of this movie. While a far, far more believable (though silly) fetish than the one unleashed on us poor viewers in Cronenberg's "Crash", it's still nothing more than another sexual-fetish movie that delves too much on one and the same thing. Greenway basically packages this story - essentially a story of a light sexual perversion - in his trademark arty style. However, this time he made a film that is easily more accessible than his previous ones. (The accentuation is on "more".) The first half-hour is very much typical Greenway: "floating" pictures and scenes, some sort of poetry or literary readings, no concrete plot, visual showing-off, etc. But as soon as Vivian Wu leaves Japan we suddenly witness a premiere in Greenway's film-making career: (more-or-less) normally shot scenes. What follows is Wu's search for Mr.Right (or Mr.Paint-On-Me-Correctly-But-Don't-Let-That-Erection-Disappoint). "Good calligraphers are old and cannot take advantage of what I have to offer, while young ones get too distracted," she says. Some problems she's got there, the poor girl... She wants the perfect mate, you see. If she were totally ugly, she'd be happy just to have a dog urinate on her leg. But as a true princess with high expectations, she pretty much settles on McGregor (well, she uses him), who just happens to be the homosexual lover of the publisher Wu has her sights set on. Greenway would probably dismiss all criticism of this far-fetched coincidence as an attempt to make a point about destiny. At first McGregor doesn't fulfill the high expectations of our Japanese "princess" (bad spelling, messy hand-writing, or something like that being the unforgivable drawback), but she gets involved with him when she finds out about the connection with the publisher. Soon she gets him hooked on both calligraphy and her body (the ease of achieving the latter which is not explained, other than the obvious assumption that McGregor must be bi). The last quarter then delivers the inevitable - the obligatory dosage of vintage Greenway: death, gore, and yet more perversion (this time a little on the heavy side). Still, the film is - as expected - original and unusual. It seems to me, though, that the film lacks the depth that was probably aimed for here; it is hard to identify with anyone here, and most of the film simply deals with Wu's search for someone who will excite her with the proper calligraphic skills. Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing "deep" or profound about that. Making a black comedy out of that would have worked better.

This movie was awful, as well as disturbing. A Japenese woman is obsessed with being written on, like her father did. Her search for a proper lover to write on her as she wishes leads to Jerome (Ewan MacGregor), but not before a good half hour into the movie. They are in love, they paint each other, have lots of graphic sex, etc. Then because they want to get a book published or something, she allows Jerome to sleep with this old guy who owns a book store. Jerome is having a lot of fun, and doesn't return on time so she banishes him. He gets depressed a commits suicide. Then she paints on his body and buries him. The old guy digs up his body, and I wish I had turned the movie off right after that. Make sure you do. You do not want to see what happens next.