The film begins with a visual list of eight and a half Japanese Pachinko Parlours filmed in several Japanese cities -- Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto. - Peter Greenaway

I would be curious about one of those Jane Austen women -- you know -- long-suffering, dutiful -- but all right in the end -- a plump 19th century type, five foot four, ringlets, brown eyes, long fingers.

If every man is supposed to think of sex once every nine minutes, what on earth does he think of in the other eight?

The major sweep of this book's living is too often marred by qualifying. It is hedged about with ifs and buts and if onlys and howevers, excuses for a life that is about to shut its covers for the last time and then crumple into dust in an unseen and never-to-be-remembered library.