The Pillow Book 1995

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Despite its arresting visual style, its wave after wave of creative and hypnotic images, "The Pillow Book," as its name hints, slowly but inexorably leads to sleep. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: ''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. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: I can't say that I've ever entertained fantasies of writing on someone's body. But Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book does, at least, succeed in making it look like an erotic activity. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: A seductive and elegant story that combines a millennium of Japanese art and fetishes with the story of a neurotic modern woman who tells a lover: "Treat me like the pages of a book." Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: Such Greenaway films as "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover," "Prospero's Books" and now this make one wonder if they're really as deep as they pretend to be. Perhaps, as his actors, this emperor has no clothes. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: A very intimate, sensual film, and a torrid, lurid melodrama, full of passion, jealousy, hatred and revenge. Read more

David Stratton, Variety: At first daunting but ultimately awesomely impressive and beautiful. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Greenaway, whose mind is one of the most impressive, complicated organs that ever sat on the shoulders of a filmmaker, seems to be playing connect the dots to himself, almost dumbing himself down to be commercial. Read more