Greenaway

Nagiko's father was a calligrapher, and when she was a little girl he would write his birthday greetings on her face. Her mother would read aloud from a 1,000-year-old manuscript, (italics) The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, (unital) which dealt among other things with the arts of love. Because children invest their birthdays with enormous importance, it's no wonder that when Nagiko grows up she finds a powerful link between calligraphy, human flesh, poetry, and sexuality.

An 'essayistic' documentary in which Greenaway's fierce criticism of today's visual illiteracy is argued by means of a forensic search of Rembrandt's Nightwatch. Greenaway explains the background, the context, the conspiracy, the murder and the motives of all its thirty-four painted characters who have conspired to kill for their combined self-advantage. Greenaway leads us through Rembrandt's paintings into seventeenth-century Amsterdam. He paints a world that is democratic in principle, but is almost entirely ruled by twelve families. The notion exists of these regents as charitable and compassionate entities. However, reality was different.

Tulse Luper is a 20th century everyman whose collection of 92 suitcases intersects with every person, event and movement in history. Here in the second of a three part story, we find him working in a cinema, which gives him ample opportunity to cross paths with virtually every artistic device and dramatic character known to man.

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.

A woman with a body writing fetish seeks to find a combined lover and calligrapher.

The first of three parts, we follow Tulse Luper in three distinct episodes: as a child during the first World War, as an explorer in Mormon Utah, and as a writer in Belgium during the rise of fascism. Packed with stylistic flourishes, it's a dense, comic study of 20th century history, revolving around the contents of one man's suitcases.

Identical twins Oliver and Oswald Deuce lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. The brothers, who are zoologists, become obsessed with the death and decay of animals. They both have a relationship with Alba, the driver of the crashed car, who loses first one leg then the other. When Alba dies, the twins film their own death.

Six years after the Glorious Revolution, during the reign of William and Mary over England, haughty and gifted artist Neville is contracted by a woman to produce 12 drawings of her wealthy husband's estate and garden. In return, she pays him a modest fee and sleeps with him. However, there is more intrigue and mystery unfolding around him than Neville first realizes, and he becomes part of a complicated plot beyond his control.

Tired of her husband's philandering ways, the mother of two daughters drowns her husband. With the reluctant help of the local coroner, the murder is covered up. Her daughters are having similar problems with relationships, and tend to follow their mother's example, and the coroner becomes reluctantly involved in their murders as well. As the plot progresses, visual and spoken numbers appear in the scenes, counting from one to one hundred.

When churlish mobster Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) acquires an upscale French restaurant in London, he dines there nightly, effectively scaring off the clientele with his bad manners. His wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren), is especially disgusted by him, and soon begins an affair with another restaurant guest, Michael (Alan Howard). Despite their efforts to keep it a secret, however, Spica finds out about their trysts, and he plans to exact a terrible revenge.