Sakuran

Ninagawa Mika's "Sakuran" is a gorgeous, vibrant and simply beautiful movie. Stunningly visual, lavish and absolutely mesmerizing.

Based on manga writer/artist Anno Moyoco's "joyosei" (young woman's) comic series "Sakuran", the story tells of a young girl sold to a brothel in the red-light district of Yoshiwara by her indifferent mother (during the late Edo period) and her struggles to adapt to life as a Oiran (courtesan).

The rebellious girl is put under the care of a beautiful Oiran, Shohi (Kanno Miho). The girl is given the name Tomeki and is trained by Shohi in the ways of becoming a great courtesan. She suffers much at the hands of her new "family" but in time becomes a "hikkomi" (prostitute).

Her increasing popularity among the various Edo clientèle soon overshadows that of the current favorite Takao (Kimura Yoshino) much to her jealous disdain. Now given the more glamorous name Kiyoha, the young courtesan (Anna Tsuchiya) struggles with life as a Oiran while trying to find true love in a fake world. Eventually she achieves her goal of becoming a Yoshiwara star and assumes the new name of Higurashi but even this long sought after goal seems unsatisfying and she longs to find her own happiness.

While comparisons to Rob Marshall's 2005 "Memoirs of A Geisha" are inevitable (Geisha are not Oiran and vice versa) especially with regards to story, I think "Sakuran" is more stylistically similar to Sofia Coppola's 2006 "Marie Antoinette". Like "Marie Antoinette", "Sakuran" is set in the past but rather than present it in a dull, drab, dated fashion, Ninagawa takes the opposite approach and presents the Edo period as a glorious spectacle of color and flamboyance. The modern rock music soundtrack, use of modern Japanese and focus on spectacular fashion also add to the similarities. This is not a historical documentation but an artistic interpretation of life at the time not unlike movies like "Samurai Fiction".

Where "Memoirs of a Geisha" played more like a flawed theatrical fairy tale seen through the eyes of foreigners ("Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado" comes to mind) "Sakuran" seems like a sensual and romantic Japanese manga come to life.

Photographer turned director Ninagawa's eye for detail and skills in photography are put to great effect in "Sakuran" and it really shows on screen. The world of "Sakuran" seem almost too beautiful to be real. Cinematographer Ishizaka Takuro should also be credited with the amazing camera work.

With fabulous production designs by Iwashiro Namiko and breath taking costumes and makeup by Iga Daisuke and Sugiyama Yuko "Sakura" is a good looking film.

The screenplay by Tanada Yuki and Anno Moyoco tries its best to adapt the long manga story to film and does so admirably. Like her equally talented husband, Anno Hideaki (Evangelion, Cutie Honey Movie), Moyoco's flair for visuals do tend to overshadow the story a bit. I would have loved to see more of the mundane everyday lives of the Oiran as well as Kiyoha/Higurashi's struggles at trying to be accepted.

Rock idol/model Anna Tsuchiya is an unconventional beauty (she reminds me a lot of Christina Ricci) and is definitely very good here. While her rebel role is not all too dissimilar from her previous role in fan favorite "Shimotsuma Monogatari" (AKA Kamakazi Girls), "Sakuran" does give her more of an opportunity to display her very natural and playful acting style. I hope that she is given more roles in the future that showoff more of her acting talents as indeed it is a waste to have her type-casted in the same type of "Jajauma" character.

The modern soundtrack by Shiina Ringo (which mixed jazz, rock, pop and even cabaret) was also very good and surprisingly didn't really seem that much out of place amid the Edo era Yoshikawa setting.

"Sakuran" is definitely a surprising delight and a very good debut for Ninagawa who is certainly poised to become another shining star in the Japanese cinema world.

If you pick up "Sakuran" with the intention of enjoying another artsy, sensitive depiction of geisha life, you're dead wrong. "Sakuran" is a movie about *oiran* life (for those who do not know: geisha are entertainers, and oiran are prostitutes). As such, you're not going to watch a bunch of well-behaved and manicured women. Here, you'll see bitch-slaps, coarse language, and a hard-ass main character with a rather modern view of life who can't really fit in with her peers. In other words, despite the fact that its setting is in the past, it's a fitting movie for the modern woman to relate to.

"Sakuran" is based on a Japanese manga series, so many scenes in the movie are shown with many colors. It's beautiful in its own way, though movie purists aren't going to like it. It also has a lot of pop music in it, which purists are going to find jarring and dissonant with the period depicted. However, the target audience is clearly not them, and the movie will treat them with the same disdain that the main character (herself played by a pop star turned actress) shows toward the high-class, privileged lords and samurai.

The movie makes many statements about the Japanese class system and politics, too, but it doesn't exactly shove them down your throat, either. In the end, the movie is about the freedom to choose love in spite of the expectations of class and vocation. Don't take it too seriously, and enjoy the ride.

Sure is colorful. There's a lot to write about when discussing this film but very little of it has to do with the story: In eighteenth-century Japan, a young girl is sold to a brothel by her mother; she's rebellious and tries to escape all the time; she's more talented and beautiful than all the other girls (suspension of disbelief required); she becomes an oiran (in the hierarchy of prostitutes, sort of like a four-star general in the army).

It's not that the story is bad or unimportant, it's that everything else about the film screams "Look at me! Look at me!" The sets and costuming, the soundtrack, and the casting of a mixed-race Polish/Japanese version of Courtney Love in the lead role all go against type. And one cannot help but notice that this is not Memoirs of a Geisha. Insight from the nearly sixty second montage of naked female breasts near the beginning of the film might be missed if one doesn't notice that the director Mika Ninagawa, the art director Namiko Iwashiro, the music director Ringo Shiina, the producer Chikako Nakabayashi, the scriptwriter Yuki Tanada, and the artist of the original manga Moyoco Anno are all women.

The film is beautiful to look at, if a little over-indulgent at times. No attempt is made to be true to the period. I don't speak Japanese, and subtitles are always deficient in nuance, but I'm sure the dialog is straight off the streets of contemporary Tokyo and not in any Edo period parlance. The mannerisms and delivery, and even the subtitles suggest this, and it's one of the things about the film I'm undecided about. I'm not generally a fan of costume dramas or period pieces so on the one hand I was interested in seeing this modernized production, but on the other hand I felt a sense of incongruity while watching it. The bold colors of the sets and costumes didn't bother me but the soundtrack is a little odd. Not so much in the style—which swims through many modern genres of pop, rock, and jazz—as in the reverb. The music often doesn't sound like it is in the same size room as the action that is taking place. I like Ringo Shiina's music, have a few of her solo CDs and those of Tokyo Jihen, the band she also plays in. It's not that I think the music is bad, or that it is too terribly out of place. I think the sound design could have been better, and I think that some of the folks who find the soundtrack a little jarring would be less put off by it if more attention had been paid to the overall sound design.

Finally, I was not won over by Anna Tsuchiya in the lead role. I'm sure casting her was a well-thought out conscious decision by the director and I also, in theory, think she fits the package the director was trying to deliver. It's not that she doesn't look 'traditionally' Japanese, whatever that is. And it's not that she lacks a certain elegance I've come to expect of these types of characters, although I'm not surprised by the omission of her doing any of the arty things these pre-geisha geisha types were supposed to be fluent in like music, poetry, dancing, or witty conversation. It might be that she just isn't a very good actress. These rock star cum actress types often possess great charisma that passes itself off as good acting in the right context. I'm not sure this is one of them. I hope I haven't spoiled it for potential viewers by bringing up Courtney Love, but that's what it felt like to me, a little vulgar and somewhere between disappointing and distracting. Tsuchiya is a lot more attractive in her own musical environment than she is in this film. I just didn't buy her as a sophisticated beauty who rises to the top. Maybe I'm just upset that Yoshino Kimura is given short-shrift in the fake eyelash department or that the truly beautiful and engaging Miho Kanno is dispatched with too early in the film.

This is the ideal movie to put in your DVD player in order to impress your friends with your new flat-screen TV! The colours have been ramped up to 11 and the photography is absolutely stunning. Near the beginning of the film we see Anna Tsuchiya's character as a child watching the Oiran (the number 1 courtesan) parading down the street on her incredibly high wooden sandals. It is one of several visual sequences which, as a lover of the Japanese aesthetic (past and present) I simply can't get out of my head! Fantastic! The director (she is more famous as a photographer) uses the same approach (of modern music for a period movie) as Sophia Coppola in 'Marie Antoinette' but, for my money, much more successfully. Modern music frequently jars in Japanese movies but here it works brilliantly. Beneath the incredible visuals the story is really one of the brightly-plumed bird trapped in a gilded cage; beautiful as she and everything around her is, Anna Tsuchiya's character knows that escape seems impossible. But make no mistake, this is not a gloomy film, it's a downright treat.

It's painfully clear that all effort in this film was directed toward cinematography and very little attention to everything else. Most obvious mistake is the miscast of the entire female cast. Many of them are very experienced and capable, but they all seemed out of place, and having an amateur director certainly didn't help. The story is a very common Geisha story, and characters behaved very inconsistently, thus making it extremely difficult for me to connect with the heroine.

This movie's theme is "modern prostitution", but still, it was annoying how Tsuchiya Anna's lead character kept talking like a female motorcycle gang member while everyone else spoke in old Japanese fitting for this setting. This movie has very beautiful vibrant colors, similar to Zhang Yimou's "Hero", but viewers can easily tell it's filmed in a cheap, elaborate set. This is one of those jidaigeki made specifically for foreign audience: "Look at the colors, beautiful geisha, and exoticness!"

The two sequences with Shiina Ringo's insert songs were really nice though, in mid-section of the movie. I actually really disliked her music before, but they fit perfectly in this movie. Although Ninagawa Mika is a complete failure as a film director, she has a major potential in PV (music video) production.

I believe the story felt very plain because the director failed to focus on character development, and because Tsuchiya Anna's unconvincing acting as an Oiran. Had this film been directed by a known Jidaigeki director with any other known actress in Japan, it would've had the potential to become a masterpiece.