If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Blistering performances.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This movie is one of the great arts movies Ewan Mcgreggor ever made.The story starts slow and in the beginning you are going to wonder if your watching the rite movie.Its a very unique film by Peter Greenaway and its also filmed in a very strange way.Some of the scenes are in black and white but the rest is in colour.Ita also a multi lingual film including :English, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, FrenchInbetween the most beautiful french love songs are sung which accompanies the "pillow book" scenes very wellAlthough this film contains a lot of nudity both male and female it should not be viewed for that reason but for the art of it.This is definitely a movie you must see if you love indie artsy movies.Like i said its filmed very strangely but once you get the drift is amazing8/10 deserved.

This film is about a Japanese woman who has an obsession with calligraphy on skin.The plot is absolutely bizarre. I fail to see any "sensual" or "erotic" undertones. The plot turns an ancient art form into a fetishistic pornography. In addition, the scenes that are filmed in Hong Kong are certainly portraying bad parts of Hong Kong, such as the airport in the middle of the city, poor living conditions and noise pollution. Throughout the whole film, I keep thinking that "The Pillow Book" is insulting the Japanese culture and the Hong Kong environment."The Pillow Book" is a perverted, yet boring film. Seriously stay away from it.

I voted 3 for this movie because it looks great as does all of Greenaways output. However it was his usual mix of "art" sex and pretentious crap.I know lots of people like this film but I grew tired of it VERY quickly. It is definitely not for everyone. The ubiquitous McGregor obviously took the part for crediblity's sake I guess but he really should not have wasted his time. I hate to consign anyone to pseud's corner but please.....!!! On the plus side it IS visually very attractive and I enjoyed the music but could not see it through to the end and I cannot say that for many movies. I usually watch the whole thing but this is unbearable!!

A beautiful Japanese broad gets off on body-writing. This is certainly not the way Greenway would have put it, but it pretty much captures the essence of this movie. While a far, far more believable (though silly) fetish than the one unleashed on us poor viewers in Cronenberg's "Crash", it's still nothing more than another sexual-fetish movie that delves too much on one and the same thing. Greenway basically packages this story - essentially a story of a light sexual perversion - in his trademark arty style. However, this time he made a film that is easily more accessible than his previous ones. (The accentuation is on "more".) The first half-hour is very much typical Greenway: "floating" pictures and scenes, some sort of poetry or literary readings, no concrete plot, visual showing-off, etc. But as soon as Vivian Wu leaves Japan we suddenly witness a premiere in Greenway's film-making career: (more-or-less) normally shot scenes. What follows is Wu's search for Mr.Right (or Mr.Paint-On-Me-Correctly-But-Don't-Let-That-Erection-Disappoint). "Good calligraphers are old and cannot take advantage of what I have to offer, while young ones get too distracted," she says. Some problems she's got there, the poor girl... She wants the perfect mate, you see. If she were totally ugly, she'd be happy just to have a dog urinate on her leg. But as a true princess with high expectations, she pretty much settles on McGregor (well, she uses him), who just happens to be the homosexual lover of the publisher Wu has her sights set on. Greenway would probably dismiss all criticism of this far-fetched coincidence as an attempt to make a point about destiny. At first McGregor doesn't fulfill the high expectations of our Japanese "princess" (bad spelling, messy hand-writing, or something like that being the unforgivable drawback), but she gets involved with him when she finds out about the connection with the publisher. Soon she gets him hooked on both calligraphy and her body (the ease of achieving the latter which is not explained, other than the obvious assumption that McGregor must be bi). The last quarter then delivers the inevitable - the obligatory dosage of vintage Greenway: death, gore, and yet more perversion (this time a little on the heavy side). Still, the film is - as expected - original and unusual. It seems to me, though, that the film lacks the depth that was probably aimed for here; it is hard to identify with anyone here, and most of the film simply deals with Wu's search for someone who will excite her with the proper calligraphic skills. Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing "deep" or profound about that. Making a black comedy out of that would have worked better.