Sakuran

This film, from the first frame, is visually stunning. The colors are so vibrant they jump out at you, kind of like the great "Memories Of Matsuko". The story relates the lives of courtesans, mostly Kiyoha, played by the beautiful Anna Tsuchiya. They picked the right actress for this part, she is as visually stunning as the colors. The story traces her life from childhood as a courtesan, her lovers and all the trials she goes through. The film has nudity in it, which makes sense in this film's context, but it doesn't appear too gratuitous. This is the kind of film you'd want to watch in a theater or on an hdtv. It makes you appreciate the director's aim more. All in all, a good to very good film, which held my interest. I have never seen Ms. Tsuchiya in a film before, but, based on this, I will. Go see it.

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.

Much more colorful places and beautiful women,Although she's Miss,But story will told me,She very great,This just Sex and women in the man's world.

People usually will know story just this is.

Why will is this it? This is one question!

Love this place's more stuff,For example Beautiful's scene and best woman actor.

This just how're friendly and feels.

The woman's act very nice and okay,She's mood feeling very okay and enough express.

After just actor,He's also very okay,With making love is describe very okay.

This just film thinking told me,Can you speaking 'SEX'.

Story will told people just this is secret,This secret just 'LOVE' and 'SEX'.

Question is I know is what's meaning,Buy also know it is no simple told you this is things.

This inside just will have answer,That a luck life and bad stuff,This is story want told us!

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.