Memoirs of a Geisha

This film, based on the novel by Arthur Golden, unfolds from the perspective of Chiyo (Zhang Ziyi), a girl who, at the age of nine, is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto in the early 1930s. Here, she learns that becoming a geisha can be the single path to wealth and independence for a woman. The head ...more

Beautiful but boring, Memoirs of a Geisha is worth watching once for the sake of its rich imagery alone. Unfortunately, without a well-paced narrative or particularly compelling story, its allure is only skin deep. While many literary adaptations suffer from a lack of focus and become chaotic in an attempt to include shallow bits from every vein and subplot in the book, Geisha succeeds in paring down its basic storyline into a fairly coherent and uncomplicated idea. Sadly, the filmmakers fail to ...more