The girl from a fishing village must learn to be a lady. A special sort of lady: a geisha, one of the "wives of nightfall" who for centuries have entertained Japanese gentlemen with delicacy, wit and performance skills. At 15, Chiyo has these graces only in embryo; but a famous geisha, Mameha, sees how they might flower. She begins the girl's education sternly. "That is a perfect bow. For a pig farmer." "Rise. Not like a horse." And slowly the eager student with the "watery" gray eyes grows into a captivating woman known as Nitta Sayuri. Hatsumomo, another geisha, sees Sayuri's promise as a threat. She spits a warning at the girl: "I will destroy you."
Arthur Golden's 1997 best seller, Memoirs of a Geisha, enticed readers with its authoritative evocation of an alien, exotic world, one in which women served men less with sexual favors than by creating a simulacrum of the feminine ideal. But the book's real pull was its take on the Cinderella story, with Sayuri as the young heroine, Mameha as the fairy godmother, Hatsumomo as the evil stepmother and the Chairman, a powerful client of the geishas, as Sayuri's prince charming.
Now director Rob Marshall, whose first big film was the 2002 musical Chicago, has made this fairy tale into an emotionally sumptuous love story. This intimate epic spans almost two decades, but its script, by Robin Swicord and Doug Wright, never hurries past the telling biographical detail of its four main characters. Nor does the movie's visual splendor ever obscure the furtive, assertive heart beating under the kimono. It's still early in the season of Oscar contenders, but Geisha has a shot to join Chicago as a Best Picture champ.
In the cast is a roster of A-list Asian actors. Ziyi Zhang, of the worldwide kung fu hits Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, plays Sayuri. Gong Li, mainland China's first international star, is Hatsumomo. Michelle Yeoh, another Crouching Tiger eminence, who was also a Bond girl (Tomorrow Never Dies), is Mameha. And Ken Watanabe, the Oscar-nominated warrior of The Last Samurai, is the Chairman.
These are some of the finest, most glamorous actors on the globe. But their combined name value means little at the U.S. box office. "I've gotta believe, in the job that I do, that when you give the audience something that they haven't seen before, they are going to like it," Amy Pascal, Sony Pictures' movie chief, says of her studio's $80 million investment. "I'm hoping the film appeals to people who have ever been in love."
Or in love with movies, for Geisha revives the sweeping spirit both of old-fashioned, mature film romance and of a day when Hollywood believed it could tell stories of any country or culture. Purists may complain that the three main geishas are played by Chinese women speaking English. But anyone familiar with current Chinese and Japanese films will tell you that one country is rich in top actresses and the other isn't. Besides, says Marshall, "I cast for the role, period."