The Pillow Book (1996) Of Flesh and Literature

Posted by CroakerBC

IMDB

The New York Times review:
Ritual, eroticism, poetry and snobbery are the cornerstones of the 10th-century Japanese text that inspires Peter Greenaway's rapturously perverse new film. Since these are also essential aspects of Greenaway's own work, the match is phenomenally apt.

"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.

This film's stylish surface makes it significantly more palatable than the other, chillier cinematic exercises (among them "Drowning By Numbers" and "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover") for which Greenaway is known.

Fetishism intact, he turns his sophisticated attention to what Sei Shonagon, the Heian courtesan whose haunting, eloquent journal entries form the thousand-year-old Japanese classic known as "The Pillow Book," called "the delights of flesh and literature." As she put it, "I have had the good fortune to enjoy them both equally." The film, in its far kinkier fashion, means to do the same.

Greenaway's "Pillow Book" is no antique: set essentially in the present, it centers on a young woman (Vivian Wu) in the grip of a peculiar erotic obsession. Nagiko, the film's heroine (and the probable real name of Sei Shonagon), is the daughter of a calligrapher who lovingly painted words and characters on her skin during her childhood. And when she grows up to become a fashion model, she needs to recapture this experience.

The film, which derives more sensuality from delicate brush strokes than many others find in conventional sex scenes, embroils Nagiko in a revenge scheme against an exploitative publisher while she tries to find a calligrapher-lover who can gratify her desires. (Read the full review here)

Christian converters the world over should take a lesson from Peter Greenaway's Pillow Book, for what better way to bring the Word of God to people than painting it on a young woman's naked body? I sure as heck was enlightened, real hard.

Since this movie is about Literature on Flesh, there are lots of full-frontal nudity, male and femal alike. That means we get to see Obi Wan McGregor's mighty love saber. I left out other male nude scenes, though.

http://hotfilms.org/movies/pillow-book-1997-dvdrip-rapidshare-726259.html

Some mild sex. Nice nudity by Chinese actress Vivian Wu (boobs, bush, butt). Cute apples, nice nipples.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/321025385/The.Pillow.Book.1995.dvdrip.divx.rar
or
http://www.multiupload.com/2A3TBOS4JP

File : 88 MB, duration: 0:08:45, type: AVI, 1 audio stream
Video : 77 MB, 1234 Kbps, 23.976 fps, 576*432 (4:3), Divx v5
Audio : 11.66 MB, 186 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, MP3, CBR,