In Peter Greenway's The Pillow Book, Vivian Wu (Joy Luck Club) plays Nagito, a Japanese ashion model living in Hong Kong, who has a passion for pen-friends; the more beautiful their handwriting, the stronger her love for them.
Nagito's pen-friends are also her lovers, and the parchment they use is her skin…in fact, she selects her lovers on the basis of their calligraphic skills and encourages them to cover her body with elegant script.
Greenaway first demonstrated his fascination with calligraphy in Prospero's Books, where the work and words of Prospero are brought to life on the screen. In The Pillow Book, he once again employs the talents of calligrapher Brody Neuenschwander (Prospero's Books, The Baby of Macon) to dramatic effect.
The film traces Nagito's fetish back to her childhood, when every birthday her father would cover her face with a solemn yet sensuous greeting using a brush and coloured inks. When the adult Nagito meets Jerome (Ewan McGregor, [Trainspotting]), it is she herself who tries her hand at this bizarre form of graffiti.
Entranced, she uses the bodies of her lovers as her paper: thus the paper becomes the pen, in a sexual role-reversal laden with symbolism. The inspiration for her writing is The Pillow Book, the diary of an aristocratic lady in 10th-century Japan.
When Jerome dies in a tragic accident, Nagito rises to the occasion with a magnificent calligraphic love-poem on his body. The body is then stolen by Jerome's male lover, who obsessed by Nagito's work - then has the body flayed.
These bizarre flourishes are becoming a Greenway trademark; for example, the horrific rape in The Baby of Macon, or the cannibalism in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
Anyway, the film ends as the 21st century begins; Nagito now has a child of her own and marks her first birthday by painting a birthday greeting on daughter's face.
The Pillow Book is the director's sixth film collaboration with producer Kees Kasander and has a number of other regular Greenaway collaborators behind the camera, such as director of photography Sacha Vierny and editor Chris Wyatt. Shot in Japan, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, The Pillow Book's funding was topped-up via a Luxembourgeois incentive scheme based on tax certificates.
Leo Barraclough
Prod co: Kasander & Wigman/Alpha Films/Woodline Films
Prod: Kees Kasander
Dir/Scr: Peter Greenaway
Ph: Sacha Vierny
Production design: Wilbert van Dorp, Andrée Putman
Costumes: Dien van Straalen, Koji Tatsuno, Martin Margiela
Editor: Chris Wyatt, Peter Greenaway
Cast: Vivian Wu, Yoshi Oida, Ken Ogata, Hideko Yoshida, Ewan McGregor
Running time: 126mins
International sales: Vine
