Vivian Wu

A story set in nineteenth-century China and focusing on the life-long friendship between two girls who develop their own secret code as a way to contend with the rigid social norms imposed on women.Read More »

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The Soong family was a political dynasty in China that reached the highest levels of power. This film follows the lives of the three Soong daughters, who were educated in America and returned to China. Ai-ling (the oldest) married a wealthy and powerful businessman. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of modern China. Mei-ling (the youngest) married Chiang Kai-shek, China’s leader during World War II. The sisters captured the world’s fascination for their brilliant marriages and their strong influence on their nation.Read More »

Kinamand (2005):Hulking Keld Decker (Bjarne Henriksen) looks little more than befuddled when Rie (Charlotte Fich), his wife of 25 years, leaves him. With his business on the rocks, he sells off nearly all his possessions, and starts eating atthe Chinese take-out restaurant across the road, methodically working his way through the menu.Read More »

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ontinuing his pattern of alternating critically praised arthouse projects with alienating personal studies, the controversial Peter Greenaway followed his unexpectedly popular The Pillow Book with 8½ Women, a playful and thoroughly obscure compendium of art history fetishism, film history, and globe-hopping comic debauchery. The results pleased few, but Greenaway fanatics will find it more rewarding than newcomers despite its glaring flaws.Read More »

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As a young girl in Japan, Nagiko’s father paints characters on her face, and her aunt reads to her from “The Pillow Book”, the diary of a 10th-century lady-in-waiting. Nagiko grows up, obsessed with books, papers, and writing on bodies, and her sexual odyssey (and the creation of her own Pillow Book) is a “parfait mélange” of classical Japanese, modern Chinese, and Western film images.Read More »