There's a scene in Memoirs of a Geisha in which the main character Sayuri -- one of the most beautiful and successful geishas in Japan -- keeps the rich businessman Nobu company at a dinner party. As Sayuri makes every pretense of devotion to Nobu, she steals intense glances at her true love, the Chairman. A tense and emotional dance, the scene is heartbreaking, as Sayuri is tied to one man and in love with another.

Such is the life of a geisha in pre-World War II Japan, in the latest big-budget epic Memoirs of A Geisha.

Based on the best-selling book by Arthur Golden, Memoirs attempts to explain the idea of a geisha to Westerners, who may think of the painted women as little more than prostitutes.

Memoirs is beautifully filmed and is as authentic as possible. Let's face it, when the director is Rob Marshall (Chicago) and one of the producers is Steven Spielberg, you're going to get something a little more culturally accurate than, say, Mulan.

Memoirs begins with Chiyo, a poor 9-year-old girl from a fishing village, who is sold into a geisha house.

Several young actresses shine in this early part of the film, nearly stealing the whole show. In one sequence, Chiyo is attempting to find her sister, who was sold into prostitution in the red-light district. This scene of the two briefly reunited sisters is riveting.

From there, Chiyo goes through an unbelievably complicated twist of events to become the geisha Sayuri (played in adulthood by the amazingly talented Ziyi Zhang). Geisha were women who, according to the book and film, were "moving works of art." The girls trained to be companions skilled in etiquette, conversation, music and dance.

The music and dance elements of the film are where Marshall really leaves his mark.

Working alongside legendary composer John Williams, Marshall injects music into every piece of this film and takes it to a completely different level. In one scene, I was completely distracted by the music blaring from the antique radio; it was so different from anything we consider music.

The film has a lot of fun with the vicious rivalry among all the geisha in town, and each actress is more gorgeous than the next.

I had to laugh, because the actresses who were slapping and pulling hair have all been ass-kicking action stars. Michelle Yeoh, once a Bond girl, is wearing only a towel in a steam room scene, and as amazing as she looks, I honestly don't think geisha ever were, for lack of a better word, ripped.

The star-crossed love story between Sayuri and the Chairman is touching, but it's here that Memoirs stumbles a little. Through no fault of the talented cast, the dialogue gets caught up in impassioned declarations and soapy plot lines (some of which never appeared in the book, for good reason).

These deviations from Golden's book are where the film tries to live up to its "we're Oscar-worthy because she's standing alone on a mountain with the wind whipping through her hair!" hype, and it's simply unnecessary. The biggest complaints I overheard in the women's bathroom after the movie -- you never know who may be listening, ladies -- were about the deviations from the book and the length.

At a slow-moving, emotionally draining two -and-a-half hours, Memoirs of a Geisha could have been a little tighter without caving in to our Western-style ideal of epics.

Still, I loved the book and I didn't leave the movie disappointed.