64
Metascore
20 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 89Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovGreenaway and his picture-perfect cast weave so many interlacing threads into the story, and so many curious subtexts - stylistic and otherwise - that it sometimes leaves us scratching our heads in wonderment.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe Pillow Book, starring Vivian Wu, is a seductive and elegant story.
- 80NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenGreenaway uses the screen rather like the calligraphers of the story use the body so that the film becomes a kind of visual "pillow book;" a multi-layered series of inscriptions and reflections with almost hypnotic power.
- 80The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinThe film is best watched as a richly sensual stylistic exercise filled with audaciously beautiful imagery, captivating symmetries and brilliantly facile tricks.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThe great irony of this film, which is (at least on one level) about the power of writing, is that the words are of secondary importance to the overwhelming visual presentation.
- 67Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanI can't say that I've ever entertained fantasies of writing on someone's body. But Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book (Cinepix) does, at least, succeed in making it look like an erotic activity.
- 50Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDespite 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.
- 50San Francisco ChronicleRuthe SteinSan Francisco ChronicleRuthe SteinThe Pillow Book sometimes seems like three different movies, each one an eyeful but together too much of a good thing.
- 50San Francisco ExaminerWalter AddiegoSan Francisco ExaminerWalter AddiegoAt 126 minutes the movie is excruciatingly long, but it is still too short to pack in all the subtle changes in character he means but fails miserably to convey.
- 30EmpireEmpireHere both Greenaway's strengths and weaknesses are on show as he toys with the viewers' capacity to ingest blurring metaphors and convoluted content.