Film Reviews

Memoirs of a Geisha

• Rating:
• Director: Rob Marshall
• Starring: Gong Li
• Details: Japan, 145mins, 15s.

Sold into a house to provide for her poor family, Sayuri (Zhang) begins puberty as a slave to the house of a Geisha - a high class prostitute and well respected figure in Japanese culture. There she suffers torment at the hand of the jealous and bitchy in-house Geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li). However, a chance meeting with a wealthy chairman (Watanabe) proves to be the turning point in Sayuri's life as she is transformed from a simple slave into one of the most desirable women in Japan. With the help of the Chairman's favourite Geisha (Yeoh), Sayuri learns witty conversation, dancing and instruments to please businessmen while harbouring a secret love for the chairman for the rest of her life, which is a non-starter for a Geisha as one must sacrifice all feelings for her craft.
Chicago director Rob Marshall showers the screen in every colour he can manage and this is visually stunning from start to finish but even though the luscious look is polished to gleaming point, it becomes a little staged after a time. Taking a little of John Ford's The Quiet Man vision of Ireland, Marshall is determined to show a '30s era Japan as an American would see it, rather than how it actually is as everything is too perfectly put together (like a Geisha - we got that, Rob). Where it lets itself down is the language as the largely Chinese/Mandarin cast speak in English so not everything they say is entirely clear.

Review by Gavin Burke