As a followup to Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha," an extraordinary story of a retired Geisha looking back on her life's work, and the 2005 movie made of it, this documentary works well as a followup. Picking up on these dedicated ladies where the book and film left off, it further details how they live and function in modern day Japan, particularly around the Kyoto region.

In a series of interviews with dance and music masters, aged queens of the Geisha world and novices in training, it clarifies how the practice is maintained, financed and fit into a society that still values its traditions.

The emphasis is on training in the old styles of dance, its slow rythms, its gestures, poses, tableaus and symbolic lines of movement in the magnificent kimonos that are, themselves, classic art forms.

The clash of tradition with modernity, a story of diminishing support and outside influence, is expressed by the philosophical ruminations of one choreographer who laments over limited resources, and by one Geisha's stark break from traditional rules with a 2nd career as a jazz and pop singer who enjoys a record contract and travels to New York in between geisha gigs.

The nature of the disciplined subculture is made visually stunning when a single geisha travels alone along the grey city, past shopping districts and alleyways in her brilliant ornamentation, en route to a performance or dinner appointment. Anywhere else it would be assumed a costume for a party. Here, the expressions on the street people as she passes illustrates the special strata and regard these women occupy among their fellow citizens. Imagine a painting come to life.

Never mentioning the issue of sex or, even, of marriage, the devotional and artistic aspects of the subject is perhaps not of ephochal interest. But this highly proper view of it -- despite the awkwardness of its documentary structure revealing an amateur at work -- is nevertheless a valuable documentation of something unique and mesmerizing that continues centuries-old practices which haven't ceased to fascinate and charm.

                                      ~~  Jules Brenner 
                                          Cinema Signals