MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA -- by naudy (6)

When this movie came out there was some controversy in my office about the casting. Everyone was all up in arms about the (pretty nearly) all Chinese cast of a film about Japan. During the resuting brouhaha, I defended Rob Marshall's decision to cast whomever he wished. After all, movie makers aren't making films just to meet the needs of political correctness. They're making movies people will pay to see. And, since the average cost of seeing a movie, after getting a babysitter, paying for gas, parking, and food, runs around $50 for two adults, you'd better get some sort of star in the picture that the husbands won't mind seeing. Since the three main stars in this film -- Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, and Michelle Yeoh -- are better known for their action films, it makes economic sense. And it shouldn't matter anyway. Actors aren't paid for being themselves. They're paid to portray characters. It shouldn't matter if you are a Chinese woman playing a Japanese woman any more than it matters if you are a straight man playing a gay one.

And then I saw the movie. It wasn't Japanese. Sure it was set in Japan and the girls wore kimono, but it was as Japanese as Luciano Pavarotti singing Schubert. (Which is to say, it isn't.) Everyone talked too much. (WAAAY to much.) Everyone knelt in small rooms and actually looked at each other. (Which is weird.) No one had black laquered teeth. (Which is flatly impossible.) There wern't any spaces, any inferences, any of the

thousand small gracious non-events which define and describe Japanese life. I found myself watching these very Chinese women's hands, missing the delicacy of wrist which all the Japanese girls I know actually have. Geisha may be artists, be creatures exclusively dedicated to beauty, but this movie wasn't and didn't give us anyone who was.

I was disappointed.