The Pillow Book

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Eric L @Eric_94 Jul 23, 2026 Mr Greenaway loved to delight and perplex (he would probably say "challenge") audiences throughout the 80s and 90s. The Pillow Book is from his mid-90s period, when video processing toys were on the up - hence plenty of format trickery here, picture-within-picture that becomes slightly annoying at times, black-and-white bits, colour bits, small frames, large frames... Sometimes it works, but sometimes it's gimmicky - like "because I can". Wu and McGregor are superb throughout, in what must have been very demanding roles. Elsewhere I could have lived without some of the sub-plots around the creepy book-publisher. But it's visual art, and repays time, attention and repeated watching. You wouldn't run through an art gallery, so taking time to appreciate the language of film is not time that's wasted. See more Dave S @RT68722908 Feb 8, 2024 After watching Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book, you can't help but get the feeling that Greenaway is speaking a totally different cinematic language or, at the very least, trying to create a new cinematic language. While the plot, characters, and themes presented are all obviously important, it is the visual presentation in The Pillow Book that really stands out – frames within frames, constantly shifting aspect ratios, superimposed images, and more, to the point where it can feel overwhelming at times, despite its undeniable beauty. This is not a movie for all tastes and, strangely enough, might be more appreciated if the film is read about before being viewed, giving the viewer a better chance in understanding what the hell is going on and, more importantly, why the film looks the way it does, which can be a distraction for an unsuspecting audience during a first viewing. See more Ęxçëşș M @ExcessMale May 14, 2022 The cinematic/visual style from Greenaway alone makes this so amusing to watch unravel. Almost like silk in cinematic format. See more May 1, 2022 I loved this movie!! See more William L @RT77267842 Jan 16, 2022 A really interesting premise and a plot that gradually grows more interesting as time passes - a publisher that finds himself increasingly obsessed with books that arrive from an unknown source, each painted on a live human body (and that's a gross oversimplification). Despite all that, The Pillow Book is so alienating in its style, feeling massively pretentious and stuffy as it establishes its main character's particular fascination with calligraphy on her own skin, and tying that practice in with her own sexuality; it's unconventional, reimagining aesthetics and texture for the purposes of its unique narrative hook, but if I said I enjoyed any of that experimentation I'd be lying. The plot itself is miles more engaging and well thought-out than the inconsistent, 'different-for-the-sake-of-being-different' visual composition, I wish Greenaway had left some of his auteurism at home and taken a bit of a more traditional approach with this one. The Pillow Book is bizarre; it's easy to imagine why fans will like the more distinctive elements, but they just weren't for me. Props for originality, but not as much for the quality of the experience. (2.5/5) See more Apr 30, 2020 A film about a woman obsessed with the eroticism of calligraphy. Freudian in its treatment of childhood memories. Visually sumptuous. The superposition of frames upon frames is glorious to behold. The film's visual experimentation really worked for me, and gave it the structure of a poem. It plays with linguistics in a really delightful way. Its final scene, in which the narrator reads her own pillow book that the film visually narrates, was like an epiphany. See more Read all reviews

The Pillow Book

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