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MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
January 3, 2006
Reviews for Geisha have been generally lukewarm but I thought it was in its own way totally awesome. Geisha is an Asian actor jamboree; although Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat were missing from the list of Asia’s big guns. The performances of Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Ken Watanabe elevated Geisha’s muddled plotting. Geisha is a visual delight and an interesting, if glorified and fanciful look at the geisha of the early 20th century. The criticism levied at Geisha include the choice of making all the actors speak English and casting Chinese Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Taiwanese Michele Yeoh as Japanese geishas. None of that bothered me in the slightest. Subtitles would probably have seemed more “authentic” to American audiences but the same issues would have come up when the Japanese hear the actors speaking their language. As for non-Japanese actors in the main roles, I can’t argue with the choices as all the actors deliver. Plus seeing Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li together in scene after scene is fucking marvelous. As beautiful as I think Ziyi is, Gong Li at times blows her off the screen, she’s so gorgeous. The two of them together is like looking at the sun. A Chinese sun. This is one of my favorite films of the year.
- John Orquiola
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