Tolerable Chick Flicks

Memoirs of a Geisha is a lavishly spun tale of friendship and rivalry, hope and despair, choice and duty, love and lust, traditional custom and forbidden emotion. The overall effect is not so unlike Mameha's description of geisha themselves: a moving work of art.

The mystique of the Japanese geisha is legendary. Agony and beauty live side by side for the woman who is not permitted to choose her own destiny and who exists in a floating world of shadows.

The most magical moment in Memoirs of a Geisha, a film overflowing with such moments, comes when a little girl meets a man whose kindness proves to be life transforming. Kindness is an act of kinship, the very opposite of disrespecting a person. For this little girl, this act comes at a time when she is feeling lonely, hopeless, and helpless. The man's unexpected care becomes a gift of hope and new direction.

Memoirs of a Geisha does not yield all its secrets on first viewing; there are many layers of meaning and mystery to be savored again and again. Best of all, here is a movie that unabashedly celebrates small acts of kindness as the most precious thing we can bestow on one another. Like a pebble thrown into a pond, a small thing sends out many ripples.

(Just thinking if geishas used to be the supermodels of Japan then, Zhang's head-turning Sayuri is Giselle, Yeoh's cool, ultra-professional Mameha is Tyra and Gong's fragile, volatile diva Hatsumomo is Naomi. ha ha ha)