User Reviews

Sakuran, though different on some levels from Memoirs of A Geisha, shares the same, maybe better, artistic visual. This movie tells the story of an oiran (prostitutes, different from geisha) named Kiyoha (later Higurashi) played by Tsuchiya Anne.

Much more realistic than Memoirs of A Geisha, Sakuran has a simple plot circling in Kiyoha's raise from a hikkomi (oiran-apprentice) to the highest ranking oiran in Tamakuki House. A numbers of men introduces her with love, heartbreak, hope and freedom. The beautiful Kiyoha meets first love Sojiro (Narimiya Hiroki), wealthy samurai Kuranosuke (Shiina Kippei) and a kind brothel clerk Seiji (Ando Masanobu). Like a goldfish in a tank, the outspoken Kiyoha longs for freedom.

Sakuran presents beautiful vibrant colors from kimonos, interior decors and ornaments throughout the movie. Very energetic and accompanied with strong modern songs by Shiina Ringo, Sakuran is sure to please the eyes. Outside its beautiful visual, the storyline and plot is rather bland without the ability to stir the viewer's emotion. Tsuchiya Anne gives a pretty strong performance and fits her character well.

Sakuran was a fun, interesting and beautiful film. I had meant to watch it for some time but never quite felt in the mood for it when I made it to the Tsutaya DVD rental shop near my house. Last Friday I finally took the plunge and am so glad I did. Just before I watched it I was online and thought I would as I sometimes do check how people had rated it on IMDb. I like to believe this never affects my viewing of the film and am now surprised at it's relatively low rating. I was also surprised by the last person to review it. I rate the film an 8 but only really because I found the set disappointing at times and because Miho Kanno was not in it enough for me. Though there are many beautiful images in the film and wonderful costumes the overall cinematography and set give the feeling of a TV show. That perhaps is a criticism of the budget rather than the director.

Kiyoha the main character? Kiyoha is wonderful. She remains tough and untainted by her treatment and surroundings and the way that she speaks compared to the otehrs around her more than anything emphasises this. When I say that she is tough I mean just that but she also has a rather pure and gentle soul despite her way of acting and speaking. We can see this in how she treats the younger girls in the brothel. I would guess that Anna Tsuchiya does an excellent job of portraying the character from the comic book series but would have to ask somebody who has read the series to find out for sure. There certainly seems to be none of the American weakness and fatal flaw in adapting controversial comic book characters to the screen. I feel that nothing had been watered-down here.

In Kiyoha's relationships with men we see an unexpected honesty that both attracts us and them to her as much as her beauty. There are three main rivals for her love. Though not entirely unexpected her final choice is still gratifying. I shall not tell you much more except that I loved this film and again fell in love with Miho Kanno. What a beauty!

I just realized why the colors and sets in "Sakuran" were so flashy and gaudy, and just painful to look at. The story is about a high-class prostitute known as an oiran in Japanese. Their kimono were always flashier and gaudier than other kimono so that the oiran would stand out. But the director, Mika Ninagawa, had to make sure that the director stood out even more than the main character, or even the story.

What Anna Tsuchiya did in the movie just gave me the creeps. You couldn't call it acting. It was nothing more than catering to her flipped-out, high-school-girl fan base. Hey Anna, good luck on that one as you get older. Yeah, right, an oiran as a crude and vulgar, prone- to-violence, biker chick. Didn't we already see you portray this character in a more appropriate movie?

The story was painfully boring and predictable. What is the story of "Sakuran"? An obnoxious little bitch ever remains true to her self which is just that: an obnoxious bitch. She finds that, inexplicably, men are attracted to her and that she has an unexplained ability to manipulate men and becomes a successful, high-class prostitute even though she talks and behaves like she's a member of a female biker gang. This so-called seductive ability of hers is talked about but we never see it in action, probably due to the ineptitude of the main, pretend-phony-biker chick, I mean "actress."

The main character of the movie makes a wealthy and powerful man angry at her because she keeps him waiting while she services a much more lowly customer. Not very oiran-like, is it? How could such a woman ever become an oiran? Oh, because the previous oiran got herself killed and the house needed a whore that could demand a high price. Who would pay a high price for a slut so cheap? Rumors get around. How could there be no repercussions for what she did to the powerful guy? Because the screenwriters are dolts. They just made up a bunch of crap.

Then an even more wealthy and powerful guy falls for her (why?) and she throws him over for a penniless guy who is generally cold and distant toward her but respects who she really is (which doesn't make sense. How can anyone respect someone so worthless?).

Speaking of crap, it's like the director squatted down and took a huge, psychedelic-colored dump on the aesthetics, culture, and society of the Edo Period. What of such things as sabi, mono no aware, wabi, subtlety, elegance, a rigidly hierarchical society? All shat upon by a director who comes off as a senseless, nouveau-riche parvenu. The amazing thing is that so many other Japanese, in watching this movie, squatted down around the director and took steaming spoonfuls of this blazing-colored stinking crap and exclaimed how tasty it was.

Argentinean tango music with violin and bandoneon as backdrop for the Edo Period when Japan was totally isolated from the international world (except for the 3.7 acres of Dejima)? Why not just have Anna, the bad-ass-biker oiran, answer her cell phone and the rich and powerful daimyo character drive off in a hissy fit in his red Ferrari? The music we had to listen to was jarring and anachronistic (the same as the art design).

Near the ending, I liked that there were only two or three tiny flowers on the shrine cherry tree. But, earlier, the second she said she would leave the quarters when it bloomed, we all knew exactly what would happen. How boring, to telegraph the ending so clearly. But what's the point of the old tree blooming? That rich and powerful guy already made the pleasure quarters bloom in cherry blossoms like the mountains of Yoshino in spring. That didn't impress her at all? No, of course not. I already know that about whores. The guys that treat them nicely get kicked in the balls. Maybe it bugs the whores to have people idealize them when they themselves know the truth of who they are: just cheap and worthless.

Considering the director's obsession with goldfish, the second to last scene should have been of a goldfish bowl on a verandah accidentally knocked over. Two fish tumble into a stream which carries them off to escape beyond the walls of the pleasure quarters, belying how goldfish are stuck in their bowl and can't survive outside (just like the denizen's relationship with the pleasure quarters). Otherwise the talk of the fate of goldfish has no meaning.

In the final scene the cherry trees were full in bloom, but the brevity of the blooms is one thing special about cherry blossoms. I couldn't help thinking that soon enough dusk would wipe away all the soft pink color and warmth from the scene. The sky would go quickly from hints of shadow, into an ever- deepening gloom, and night would fall. It would become cold, very cold. And dark. That really wasn't a happy ending, was it? Romantic love (in the Edo Period?) could survive in the face of terrible poverty and being ostracized for about as long as those cherry trees bloomed. Maybe a few days, unless it rained sooner. But the unconsummated romantic love we see here? It's existence in this period is incomprehensible.

Anna Tsuchiya walking in the shoes of an oiran? She couldn't do it. Literally. Check out the scene of her "promenade" where she seems to have the correct footwear on but she has to hold on to some guy's shoulder to keep from tumbling on her ass.

I was going to give this movie two stars for the art direction but then I realized what that was all about: sick dominance on the part of the director. Those colors and sets are just the way the director has of screaming, "I'm the most important one here! Me! It's all about me!!!!"