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Memoirs of a Geisha

2005

Rob Marshall

Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li ...

6.9

51,298

Romance. Drama Based on the internationally acclaimed best-selling novel by Arthur Golden. In the years before World War II, a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Sayuri. Beautiful and accomplished, Sayuri captivates the most powerful men of her day, but is haunted by her secret love for the one man beyond her reach. [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"'Memoirs of a Geisha' supplies what is required, elegantly and with skill. The actresses create geishas as they imagine them to have been, which is probably wiser than showing them as they were. (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of four)"	POS
United States	Claudia Puig USA Today	"'Memoirs of a Geisha' is like a sumptuous piece of silk: stunning yet ultimately flimsy. You wish it were more like a kimono, richly woven, multilayered and more substantial (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"A consummate piece of traditional studio craftsmanship (...) In the leading role, Zhang is convincing and mesmerizingly beautiful"	POS
United States	Carina Chocano Los Angeles Times	"Spanning two decades and a momentous war, Memoirs of a Geisha displays all the pomp and grandeur of an epic, but you wouldn't call it sweeping."	NEU
United Kingdom	Stella Papamichael BBC	"A sumptuous and absorbing portrayal of a lost and peculiar world"	POS
United Kingdom	Zadie Smith Telegraph	"Memoirs of a Geisha hurts the heart and the brain with its crushing monotony, inert, sub-human dialogue and Marshall's calculated attempt to sell us another Hollywood fairytale of prostitution."	NEG
United States	Ty Burr Boston Globe	"'Memoirs of a Geisha' is very like a geisha itself: a thing of exquisitely refined surfaces beneath which beats an ordinary heart."	POS
United States	Mick LaSalle SFGATE	"Beautiful (...) but the film is too labored and the story too overstuffed and cliched to incite passion in an audience"	NEU
United States	Rex Reed The New York Observer	"So much to see and hear, yet the magic of Memoirs of a Geisha is the human way it touches the heart. The cumulative effect is like being knocked unconscious by the wing of a butterfly"	POS

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