THE PILLOW BOOK [IMPORT]

Details

• Release Year: 1996
• Genre: Romance
• Plot: Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers) continues to delight and disturb us with his talent for combining storytelling with optic artistry. The Pillow Book is divided into 10 chapters (consistent with Greenaway's love of numbers and lists) and is shot to be viewed like a book, complete with tantalizing illustrations and footnotes (subtitles) and using television's 'screen-in-screen' technology. As a child in Japan, Nagiko's father celebrates her birthday retelling the Japanese creation myth and writing on her flesh in beautiful calligraphy, while her aunt reads a list of 'beautiful things' from a 10th-century pillow book. As she gets older, Nagiko (Vivian Wu) looks for a lover with calligraphy skills to continue the annual ritual. She is initially thrilled when she encounters Jerome (Ewan McGregor), a bisexual translator who can speak and write several languages, but soon realizes that although he is a magnificent lover, his penmanship is less than acceptable. When Nagiko dismisses the enamored Jerome, he suggests she use his flesh as the pages which to present her own pillow book. The film, complete with a musical score as international as the languages used in the narration, is visually hypnotic and truly an immense 'work of art.' --Michele Goodson
• Cast: Vivian Wu, Yoshi Oida, Ken Ogata, Hideko Yoshida, Ewan McGregor, Judy Ongg, Ken Mitsuishi, Yutaka Honda, Barbara Lott, Miwako Kawai, Lynne Langdon, Chizuru Ohnishi, Shiho Takamatsu, Aki Ishimaru, Hisashi Hidaka, Dehong Chen, Ham-Chau Luong, Akihiko Nishida, Kentaro Matsuo, Nguyen Duc Nhan, Augusto Aristotle, Roger To Thanh Hien, Chris Bearne, Ronald Guttman, Wichert Dromkert, Martin Tukker, Wu Wei, Tom Kane, Kheim Lam, Daishi Hori, Kinya Tsuruyama, Eiichi Tanaka, Rick Waney, Masaru Matsuda, Wataru Murofushi, Ryuke Azuma, Seitaro Koyama, Tatsuya Kimura, Yoshihiko Nagata, Atsushi Miura, Kazushi Ishimaru, Hikari Abe, Ai Kanafuji, Yoshino Yoshioka, Yuki Nou, Masami Nishio, Satomi Kimura, Michiko Matsuo, Kintaro Murayama, Kaoru Ueda, Ohko, Junko Shinohara, Yûko Nozawa, Kiyomi Nomura, Midori Hatsuda, Miwa Hayashi, Seizo H. Inoue, Yoshihiro Kawai, Munenari Takeshima, Toshio Kimura, Masakazu Takemura, Hiroshi Nakajima, Kageyoshi Shirakata, Takashi Miyake, Hiroko Uno, Yûko Shimomura, Kana Haraguchi, Yuri Inoue, Makiko Shoji, Miwako Namie, Atsuko Nakamura, Tokiko Horiike, Akiko Yokotani, Yasuyo Ogawa, Atsuko Yoshikawa, Mariko Ajimoto, Hiromi Tani, Fukue Kitaoka, Arnita Swanson, Jim Adhi Limas, Miho Tanaka, Fabienne De Marco, Tania De Jaeger, Lu Jinhua, Tien Sing Wang, See Wah Leung, Kumi Komino, Yuki Hayashi, Maskai Taketani, See Yan Leung, François Van Den Bergen, Valerie Buchanan, Peter Greenaway
• Director: Peter Greenaway
• Runtime: 2:01
• Company: Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group
• Media Format: Movie