The Pillow Book

Directed by Peter Greenaway
Film Movement Classics
1996
126 Minutes
Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg
English, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, French
Romance, Erotic, Classics, Drama, Asian
Not Rated
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DVD
$34.95
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Beautiful to behold and impossible to forget, THE PILLOW BOOK is auteur Peter Greenaway's erotically-charged drama about love, death, revenge and the indelible nature of our earliest memories. Each year on her birthday, Nagiko (Vivian Wu) would became her father's canvas, as he painted the creation myth in elaborate, elegant calligraphy on her body. Years later, she continues the practice with a succession of lovers, including a bisexual translator (Ewan McGregor) who becomes a pawn in an escalating game of vengeance against her beloved father's exploitative publisher. Told in a series of chapters and featuring innovative cinematography and picture-in-picture techniques, Roger Ebert called THE PILLOW BOOK "a seductive and elegant story [that] stands outside the ordinary."

Cast

  • Ewan McGregor
  • Vivian Wu
  • Yoshi Oida
  • Ken Ogata
DVD Features

Commentary by director Peter Greenaway
A new essay by film critic Nicolas Rapold

Sound: Mono

Discs: 1

Blu-ray Features

Commentary by director Peter Greenaway\nA new essay by film critic Nicolas Rapold

Sound: Mono

Discs: 1

  • Highest Rating
    "If any movie I’ve seen lately demands a second viewing, with accompanying commentary, it is Film Movement’s Blu-ray re-release of Peter Greenaway’s mesmerizing The Pillow Book."
    Gary Dretzka, Movie City News
  • Highest Rating
    "This beautifully bizarre tale by the British iconoclast has received a suitably gorgeous hi-def digital transfer and is now available on Blu-ray as the first release from Film Movement Classics."
    Movie Dearest
  • Highest Rating
    "A very intimate, sensual film and a torrid, lurid melodrama full of passion, jealousy, hatred and revenge."
    Derek Adams, Time Out London
  • Highest Rating
    "CRITIC'S PICK. "The Pillow Book" finds the filmmaker at his most atypically seductive, creating a spellbinding web of cruel elegance and intricate gamesmanship, exploring the exotic, haunting beauty of the bizarre."
    Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Awards & Recognition

Official Selection
Cannes Film Festival
Official Selection
Thessaloniki International Film Festival

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