by SARAH ROWLAND

Considering Rob Marshall chose to bring a traditional Japanese tale to the big screen using a mostly Chinese cast and an English script, expectations were pretty low. Yet somehow the Chicago director still manages to disappoint with his overwrought adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best-selling novel Memoirs of a Geisha.

Save for the occasional “arigato” and “kampai,” everyone conveniently switches to English spoken through a heavy, nondescript Asian accent, (very reminiscent of last year’s vernacular blunder, Alexander.) These dialectal restrictions prove especially challenging for the child actors, including Suzuka Ohgo. She plays the all-important role of Chiyo, a young fishing peasant, who, at age nine, is sold into slavery to mean old Mother—a madam with a rather expensive opium habit.

Once in Mother’s clutches, she is tormented by Hatsumomo (Gong Li), a high-class geisha who feels threatened by Chiyo’s overwhelming beauty. After months of scrubbing floors, enduring beatings and being told she reeks of fish, Chiyo loses her will to live. That is until she bumps into the Chairman (Ken Watanabe), who buys her some sweets and tells her to buck up. From that moment on, Chiyo’s raison d’être is to become Japan’s most celebrated geisha, all in the hopes it will bring her closer to that kindly stranger.

This is where the cinematic translation really starts to go awry. In the book, this pivotal chance meeting is so eloquently worded that it transcends all age and class differences between the characters. But on film, there’s something a little creepy about a 40-something-old man macking on a prepubescent girl.

Fast-forward 10 years and Chiyo (now renamed Sayuri and played by Ziyi Zhang) is still just as determined to bag the Chairman as when she was a kid. Right around here is when the wardrobe department really earns its keep. Starting with a blue-hued scene, in which Sayuri headlines an all-star geisha recital, every kimono Zhang sports is more beautiful than the last. This truly stunning achievement in costume design is almost, but not quite, reason enough for hardcore fans of Golden’s prose to check out Marshall’s interpretation.

Memoirs of a Geisha opens Friday, Dec. 16

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