 On the surface at least, Rob Marshall's lavish adaptation of Arthur Golden's intoxicating bestseller could not be more strikingly different to this week's other Oscar hopeful, Jarhead. Set during 20 years of Japan's turbulent history, Memoirs of a Geisha is a luxuriously dressed and choreographed romantic epic with a largely female cast. Alas, both films share the same worrying predilection with style over substance. Marshall's film is a veritable feast for the senses; sumptuous silk kimonos shimmer against a backdrop of cherry-blossomed gardens and gargantuan lantern-lit temples. The heroine announces her arrival into society with a breathtaking dance routine on perilously high wooden shoes in a shower of fake snow. Sexual interest is conveyed in a lingering glance or the exposure of a wrist to a client. Never has servitude looked so ravishing. Disappointingly, the central love story never smoulders, let alone catches fire. Zhang Ziyi, the young beauty who first caught our attention in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is radiant as the geisha Sayuri - the most desired woman in all of 30s Japan. However, there is no sexual chemistry with Ken Watanabe, playing her love interest, The Chairman. "Every step I have taken has been to bring myself closer to you," whimpers Sayuri in the closing frames, finally breaking the geisha code and declaring herself to her one true love. I felt nothing but relief that the two-and-a- half hours was almost at an end. Beginning in 1929, the uncertain years before World War II, the film introduces Sayuri as a child living in a fishing village, and follows her rites of passage against a backdrop of decadent 30s Kyoto. Tutored in music and the art of conversation by her mentor, the experienced geisha Mameha, Sayuri transforms into a most desirable creature, incurring the jealousy and wrath of rival Hatsumomo (Gong Li). In time-honoured tradition, Sayuri's virginity is auctioned, but all the while she covets the love of The Chairman, the one man she can never have. Fans of Golden's book will find Marshall's film wanting. The era has been beautifully recreated and Ziyi exudes a heartbreaking innocence and vulnerability. But too much of the characters' yearning and despair is concealed behind the mask of white powder and rouge. If Mameha is right that "a true geisha can stop a man in his tracks with a single look", then she has failed Sayuri. I looked away several times to check my watch. | 
