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'Memoirs of a Geisha'
(Times)
Updated: 2005-12-09 10:54

It took Arthur Golden 15 years to research and write "Memoirs of a Geisha," his best selling novel set in 1930s and '40s Japan. It didn't take quite that long for the story to make it onto the screen, though the road was long and reportedly bumpy. The casting of Chinese actresses in the principal roles caused some grumbling in Japan, just as the all-Asian cast provoked some anxiety at the studios. Both concerns feel somewhat literal-minded and misplaced, though their double-edged tension could account somewhat for the film's seeming to unfold in an Orientalist daydream rather than an actual place and time. If the book was celebrated for its meticulous attention to historical detail, the movie's heart belongs strictly to Hollywood.

Directed by Rob Marshall ("Chicago") and starring Ziyi Zhang, Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe, the story arrives in a flurry of snow and pink cherry blossoms, swathed in silk and carefully powdered and primped for its march down the red carpet. An extravagant, relentlessly gorgeous melodrama, "Geisha" luxuriates in its own exquisite weepiness, emerging after a long soak as a classic Cinderella story �� a destitute but beautiful young girl named Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) survives untold hardship to become Sayuri (Zhang), the most celebrated geisha of her day.

If Golden's book lingered on the epochal tension of a subculture rooted in tradition at a time when tradition was being blasted away, the movie prefers to keep its eyes trained on the catty rivalries and casual cruelties that make up the life of a geisha-in-training.

Marshall devotes some time to the schooling and rituals, but what really piques his interest are the behind-the-scenes power struggles that leave you with the impression of having watched "Mean Girls" in kimonos.

Details get fudged to conform to Hollywood tropes and standards, so weird-looking chicks, like foreign languages (except for a prologue in Japanese), are out. Gone are the traditional stark white faces, rouged lower lips against white upper lips, shaved eyebrows repainted high on the forehead and matronly bouffants. The geishas have been sexified for Western consumption.
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