"The Pillow Book"

As a Ph.D student at European Graduate School, I am supposed to read certain books and watch certain movies in order to be able to participate in the Media and Communications courses' requirements. My January course would be "Peter Greenaway Movies", so I started watching his movies to get prepared for the discussions.

I had watched The Belly of an Architect (1987) a few months ago, and I was amazed at Greenaway's dealing with psychology and the theme of betrayal. Last week, I got to watch The Pillow Book (1996) and this time I got too amazed to be amazed!

The Pillow Book is a poem-movie-narration about a Japanese girl who is passionately obsessed with calligraphy. She expands this obsession to her lovers: She wants them to write on her body and finally she herself ends up with an English guy who encourages her to write on his body. There is a third person involved, a publisher whom the girl tries to seduce into getting her "pillow book" published, but the publisher is actually the English guy's lover. The love triangle here is not the conventional one, rather it's a man in love with a man who loves a woman... the jealousy and rivalry bring about reactions that go far beyond imagination.

Writing a detailed synopsis can do no good but to ruin the movie. Just watch it if you haven't and you'll admire Greenaway's stylish outlook.(Don't forget to pause the background music on the right margin under "Nuclear Song of the Week" when watching the trailer.)