"I am certain that there are two things in life which are dependable: the delights of the flesh, and the delights of literature. I have had the good fortune to enjoy them both equally," said Sei Shōnagon in The Pillow Book, a book of observations, lists, and "things that make the heart beat faster" written in the tenth century in the court of Empress Consort Teishi. A certain "concatenations of sex and text" forms the basis of Peter Greenaway's museum installation-ready multi-media work THE PILLOW BOOK. At the age of four, Nagiko (Vivian Wu, THE LAST EMPEROR) witnessed her calligrapher father (Ken Ogata, VENGEANCE IS MINE) and his publisher (Yoshi Oida) in a compromising position; the nature of which (both physical and the situational context) she would not understand until years later. This event combined with her father's practice of celebrating her birthday by inscribing her name on her face and his own on the back of her neck (an enactment of the story of God creating humanity as clay dolls, naming them, and signing the ones that met with approval to bring them to life) and her Chinese mother's nightly reading to her of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon lead her years later to seek out lovers who reminded her of "the pleasures of calligraphy." Escaping her marriage from a boorish sportsman (Ken Mitsuishi, AUDITION) and fleeing to Hong Kong - where she becomes a fashion model - her search is frustrated by the inability to find a partner who is both a brilliant artist and good lover (as well as her own uncertainty about which quality she actually favors).

Nagiko dismisses translator Jerome (Ewan McGregor, SHALLOW GRAVE - who regales her with the stories of books he has yet to write - as a "scribbler" but is spurned by his request that she teach him to use his body "like the pages of a book" to try a hand at being both pen and paper. When Hoki (Yutaka Honda), a photographer suffering from his obsession for her since she finds his flesh unsatisfactory for writing, encourages her to send her writing to a publisher, she is dispirited when the work (photographs of her writings on her own body and those of strangers) is judged as "not worth the paper it is printed on." When discovers that the publisher was her father's publisher, and that his new lover is Jerome, she seduces the younger man and manipulates him into offering up his body as messenger onto which she will inscribe thirteen books for "the publisher that rejected you but who loves me" (a sacrifice not without pleasure for him). She writes on him the first book "The Book of the Agenda" and the plan proves successful; but Nagiko grows jealous when Jerome does not return to her and "writes" the next four books on a series of increasingly vulgar strangers with increasingly bitter content; and her mission to avenge her father's memory takes a different turn when the publisher desecrates her lover in more ways than one.

Blu-ray Release Date: June 9th, 2015
Standard Blu-ray Case

Aspect Ratio:- 1.33:1

Blu-ray Release Date: February 24th, 2020
Transparent Blu-ray Case