My initial draw into the film was Ewan MeGregor, and that was satisfied of course…plenty of delicious naked Ewan. Hehe. Another draw was the imagery. Beautiful visual work.

There are several things that bother me: the picture in picture was truly distracting. You can argue it’s an art form. But when it takes a viewer several minutes to figure out the timeline, it becomes a burden, especially the blunt cut to the HK fashion show. That picture was like my TV’s picture in picture feature. I thought it was my TV doing something odd instead of an editor’s work. I’m usually a fan of some picture in picture, or more precisely, the comic book style multi-timeline/location picture-in-picture, such as Hulk 1, but not in this film.

And I didn’t realize, the director Peter Greenaway also directed  The Cook the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989). Both are about revenging a lover and in both, the dead body of the lover has an important part to play. That’s why I had similar feeling watching the movies, it’s visually stunning, (this one is more poetic more than the cook ..) kind of erotic but not quite. The form of writing on a naked beautiful body is erotic, doing in on your lover or having your lover do it on you is erotic, writing a book on an overweight guy is humorous but not erotic, and I’m in kind of still in shock recovery of that many naked male bodies… Another thing, I wish it’s more subtitled. Big chunks of Japanese dialogue is not translated. I have the benefit of reading some characters but far from understanding the poems which is very sad.

One viewer left a comment on IMDB “curiously cool and clinical rather than passionately erotic” I tend to agree with him. Also, a lot of lighting work becomes an art form by itself, instead of serving the movie. Such as the big characters on the wall to each side of the armoire (reads spring, summer on the left and fall, winter on the right). It looks like a westerner displaying his new fancy oriental tattoo rather than bringing the authentic flavored oriental art. It’s also “intriguing” that Ewan’s handwriting on Vivian suddenly got a lot better. ha.

I like this review too: “This is not a “movie,” not in the normal sense of the word. This is FILM ART. “