Nipponese bodice-ripper, from the best-seller by Arthur Golden, though it plays as if it could just as well have been by Danielle Steel, a Cinderella story of the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of a blue-eyed geisha in pre-war and postwar Japan. "A story like mine," she starts out, meaning more than she means, "should never be told." Nor should it be illustrated with the frenzy, flamboyance, and insufficient illumination accorded it by the razzle-dazzle director of Chicago, Rob Marshall. (Earlier in the gestation, it was going to be Steven Spielberg.) Gong Li is still Gong Li, and still beautiful, but in the lead role Zhang Ziyi is now Ziyi Zhang: the boom in Asian imports has brought no consistency in appellation, only confusion. (The catty rivalry on screen between the older actress and the younger, and eventually the all-out catfight, gains an added dimension when you recall that the one was bumped by the other in the films and affections of Zhang Yimou, or Yimou Zhang.) Using Chinese actresses is of course defensible in a movie aimed at the American masses, just as their speaking in English is defensible. Their speaking in unintelligible English rather defeats the purpose. With Michelle Yeoh, Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho, Youki Kudoh. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
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