A-Ge-Man: Tales of a Golden Geisha Movie Review

Admirers of Juzo Itami (The Funeral, Tam-popo, A Taxing Woman, A Taxing Woman's Return) will want to see his 1991 film, A-Ge-Man: Tales of a Golden Geisha, featuring a nicely shaded performance by its star Nobuko Miyamoto as Nayoko the geisha. Watching the sympathetic Nayoko do everything in the world for some of the biggest jerks in Japan can be a bit taxing after 108 minutes. At one point, she raises a billion yen for her true love, who promptly starts chasing after a younger women and Nayoko doesn't even sock him! Itami paces the film like a music video and some of the sequences with Toshiyuki Honda's romantic jazz score look like they're headed straight for the Asian video market as is. Although A-Ge-Man's satire is far from subtle, it was still an entertaining and at times quite funny selection at 1991's Mill Valley Film Festival.

1991 108m/C JP Nobuko Miyamoto, Masahiko Tsugawa, Shogo Shimada, Hideji Otaki, Mitsuko; D: Juzo Itami; W: Juzo Itami; C: Zenko Yamazaki; M: Toshiyuki Honda.