Word: hatsumomo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hardened gambler whose ego and heart get bruised one Christmas Eve. In Wong's contribution to the three-part film Eros, she is a notorious courtesan who loses her looks and luck over the course of two decades. In Memoirs of a Geisha, her first Hollywood film, she is Hatsumomo, tormentor of the heroine (Ziyi Zhang) and one of the greatest bitch goddesses since Bette Davis in her prime...
Magnificent and scary. Early in Geisha, when Hatsumomo discovers the young heroine in her room, Gong Li's glare was so intense that the child extra in the scene started sobbing and had to be replaced. "No one was touching her," says Fisher. "It was just the power of Gong Li's look...
...mostly ignores. Its visual splendor never obscures the furtive, assertive heart beating under the kimono. I loved seeing most of my favorite Chinese actresses in one movie (even if they were turning Japanese), and watching Gong Li stride away with her first big English-language picture. As the vindictive Hatsumomo, the Gongster flashes a stiletto stare that can burn in passion or turn on a rival with Freon fury. Those are pleasures enough for this unapologetic reviewer...
...Japan, in which young Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) is sold to a geisha house in the city. There she begins her training in the arts of being a geisha—grace, dancing, smalltalk, pouring tea—while trying to survive the cruel jealousy of the head geisha, Hatsumomo (Li) and the harsh atmosphere of the geisha house. Under the tutelage of Hatsumomo’s rival Mameha (Yeoh), Chiyo grows up to become the stunning and celebrated geisha known as Sayuri (Zhang). As World War II hits Japan, Sayuri must adapt to the changing way of life about...
...hometown beginnings of the heroine Sayuri and getting briskly to her induction into geisha life, the film announces its theme quickly and smartly. It expresses in winsome or searing glances what the novel took chapters to explain. The movie offers a little sympathy and backstory to the villainess Hatsumomo by giving her a scene with the lover whom geisha rules forbade her to have. And it gives Sayuri a fabulous dance scene that shows off director Rob Marshall's theater background...