SOURCE: Greenaway, Peter, and Nick James. “Body Talk.” Sight and Sound 6, no. 11 (November 1996): 14–17.

In the following essay, James and Greenaway explore the concept of “visual language” in Greenaway's The Pillow Book.

No single way of describing Peter Greenaway's new film, The Pillow Book, is adequate to its combination of schemes and experiences. The film derives from the classic Japanese text The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a diary written by a tenth-century court lady, containing reports of lovers, aesthetic observations and lists of favoured objects or activities. Excerpts from this appear in the film, but Greenaway wanted to find a modern equivalent, so devised this story: “28 years in the life of Nagiko, a girl growing up in Japan, escaping to Hong Kong, and then coming back to Japan again.” Also structuring the narrative are 13 books of erotic poetry, each inscribed on the body of a young man and...