No offense to director Rob Marshall, who made such a fine meal of “Chicago.” But throughout his big-screen version of Arthur Golden’s best-selling “Memoirs of a Geisha,” a question nags: What if director Zhang Yimou had taken on this story about a Japanese girl sold into slavery who grows up to be a famed geisha in pre-World War II Japan?
After all, this period extravaganza stars two of Zhang’s leading ladies: Ziyi Zhang and Gong Li as rivals Sayuri and Hatsumomo. More important, the director of “House of Flying Daggers” makes some of the most sumptuous films around.
And if not Zhang, why not Ang Lee? Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh, who play protégé and mentor here, starred in Lee’s groundbreaking “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Lee is famous for the compassionate reserve he shows his characters.
You might think it unfair to pine for what might have been. Culturally biased, even. But both directors have a gift for combining the visually bold with the emotionally nuanced. It’s an elusive mix that seldom gets its due in Marshall’s good-looking but not quite memorable “Memoirs.”
Robin Swicord’s adaptation hews honorably to Golden’s story about country girl Chiyo’s painful transformation into the famed geisha Sayuri.
The film opens on a storm-battered coast, where two sisters are taken from their impoverished family. One is sold into a brothel. Chiyo, the one with startling eyes the color of water, begins her servitude in a geisha house.
The wooden house may be run by Mother (Kaori Momoi), but when Chiyo arrives, it is lorded over by the stunning Hatsumomo (Gong Li). “When she was 20, she’d already earned her purchase price,” Chiyo is told. “Unheard of.”
Hatsumomo’s beauty is matched only by her unhappiness and resentment.
That a geisha’s desires are not her own is a theme in “Memoirs.” Her graceful way of pouring tea, her conversation, her dance, even her virginity, may be purchased. But love is not part of the bargain, not for her “danna” (sugar daddy), not for her.
One spring day, a handsome businessman, two geishas by his side, buys Chiyo a treat. It’s an act of kindness that produces a magnificent crush and a sense of purpose. Chiyo will become a geisha so she too can travel on the arm of this disarming man.
Ken Watanabe (“The Last Samurai”) plays the Chairman. Japanese movie star Koji Yakusho plays his friend and business partner Nobu, who will later succumb to Sayuri’s charms.
Cherry blossoms fall. Then snow. The child becomes a teen (Zhang). The lovely geisha Mameha (Yeoh) wheels and deals with Mother for the right to train Chiyo. Chiyo’s only friend, Pumpkin (Youki Kudoh), becomes Hatsumomo’s lesser apprentice.
Let the strategic – and most entertaining – catfight begin.
What occurs during and after World War II in the latter third of the film is small-scaled and oddly slow and hurried at the same time compared with Sayuri’s grand sojourn to the top. The one bright spot comes with the reunion of Sayuri and the war-smartened Pumpkin.
The thwarted love story of Sayuri and the Chairman feels like the movie’s own practiced gesture. It’s a lovely come-on, but hardly heartfelt. It certainly pales next to the mentor relationship between Memeha and Sayuri, or the fiery contest between Sayuri and Hatsumomo, two women hemmed into supposedly glamorous but also constricting roles.
It was always a daunting task, bringing Golden’s impressive debut novel to the screen. What was loomed deep into the shimmering fabric of Sayuri’s tale stays on the pretty surface here.
“Memoirs” could be retitled “Pretty Women,” and not because the three female stars bring gorgeous faces and compelling performances in a big, old-Hollywood way.
Throughout the film, geishas make a distinction between their art and the hard labor of their lowly counterparts in brothels. They don’t see their bodies, they insist.
Yes. But another name for “Memoirs” comes to mind: “The Best Little Geisha House in Kyoto.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
** 1/2 | “Memoirs of a Geisha”
PG-13 for mature subject matter and some sexual content |2 hours, 17 minutes|PERIOD DRAMA| Directed by Rob Marshall; written by Robin Swicord, based on Arthur Golden’s novel; photography by Dion Beebe; starring Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Koju Yakusho, Youki Kudoh, Gong Li | Opens today at area theaters.
