"Sakuran" implements a very interesting story through a thorough look at the lives of the geisha, but most of all, remains a triumph of style, a film proving that the "package" can actually be the most crucial aspect of a narrative.

| Feb 21, 2021

Sakuran's unique selling point are the jaw-dropping visuals. Director Mika Ninagawa is a garlanded fashion photographer, and she knows how to dress an image.

| Feb 10, 2019

So full of attitude that it fairly leaps off the screen with claws bared

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 29, 2008

In short, Sakuran is an enjoyable, superbly directed and impressively acted drama that gives a delicious manga-slash-J-pop twist to the geisha story. Worth seeking out.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 29, 2008

If it is all a little like an arty novelette, there's no doubt it is a feast for the eye.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

But Ninagawa's obsession with image-making saps the story until the movie, like its heroine, is merely handsomely mounted.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 29, 2008

Ninagawa, like Sophia Coppola in Marie Antoinette, brings to a traditional story a keen compositional flair and a love of bright colours, as well as deploying a lively, jazzy soundtrack.

| Aug 29, 2008

As the story progresses, it settles into something more traditionally sorrowful, but not before it has delivered a blast of energy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

The pop star Anna Tsuchiya is duly fetching as the young upstart, but not fetching enough to prop up a cast-iron potboiler.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 29, 2008

The staging is sumptuous but the imagery is static and the anachronistic score is a major irritant.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

Loud and lurid, this dazzlingly picturesque peek through the courtesans' fishbowl embraces the very cosmetic illusions that it also exposes in a world of exploited women.

| Aug 27, 2008