The story is told by Sayuri in a voice-over that looks back to her childhood and the lost world of the geisha. It begins one night when, as a nine-year-old, she was sold, along with her sister, to a geisha house in Kyoto by her poor parents. But the sisters are separated, and Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo), as she was known then, is forced to work as a servant. There, she’s beaten and abused by a geisha diva, Hatsumomo (Gong Li), in a way we last saw in the work of Charles Dickens. But Ohgo manages to give these scenes an emotional realism that stops them from being the stuff of melodrama.
It’s after encountering the kindness of a stranger known as the Chairman (Ken Watanabe) that Chiyo decides to become a geisha in the hope of winning his heart. Here, Marshall shows us her transformation at the hands of her new benefactor, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), and we are taken into the hidden world of the geisha. They were not, we learn, mere courtesans, but “artists” accomplished in dancing, conversation and music, providing male clients with glamour for social evenings. A first-class geisha could bewitch a man with the wave of her fan.
There’s no denying Marshall has done his homework and, while seeing the limitations being a geisha places on the individual, wants to celebrate their culture. Sorry, but beneath all the fancy talk and fan work, these women are no more artists than bunny girls, with far less freedom.
Still, it looks pretty. These days, any film set in the past and featuring rain, orientals and swaying red lamps at night is declared to be “breathtakingly beautiful”, and Memoirs is no exception. It has a certain beauty, but purely a cosmetic one that gives the entire past a romantic glow. And forget the controversy about the casting of Chinese actresses for this film: Zhang, Yeoh and Gong are terrific and a joy to watch. It’s the story line that is the weakest link. Sayuri’s rise to the top in a glamorous and bitchy world reminds of me a raunch-free Jackie Collins blockbuster. Yet as wet-afternoon escapism, this film is hard to beat.
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Memoirs of a Geisha
Three stars, 12A, 145 mins