/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: ‘Chilean Geisha’ Moves to Big Screen

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Apr 22 2003 (IPS) - Anita Alvarado, known as the ”Chilean geisha”, went from Cinderella to a controversial female version of King Midas, who turned to gold everything he touched. A former prostitute-turned-millionaire celebrity, she is now about to make the leap to the big screen.

‘Los debutantes’, a film directed by Andrés Waissbluth, opens in Chile on Jun. 12. Although Alvarado has only a bit part in the movie, appearing twice for a grand total of three minutes, that has been enough to fuel a sense of excitement among the movie-going public.

That is demonstrated by the fact that the Andes Film distribution company is planning a simultaneous premiere in 18 movie theatres around the country, and is investing a total of 100,000 dollars in publicity for the film, whose soundtrack goes on sale this month.

Much of the interest revolves around the role given to Alvarado, who plays a prostitute – the profession she exercised in real life in Japan, where she went in the late 1990s as a poor young emigrant fleeing poverty in her home country.

In the most risque scene in ‘Los debutantes’, which led to its being rated as only suitable for viewers over the age of 18, Alvarado practices oral sex. ”But it is just acting,” she clarified to the local press. ”There is never any direct contact with the penis, because there is a condom in between.”

When she left for Japan, Alvarado was a young single mother who was barely scraping by as a domestic. Today she is said to be worth at least 10 million dollars, according to conservative estimates.

Her luck changed in 1999, when she married Japanese businessman Yuji Chida, the head of the accounting department in a government-owned company in the northeastern province of Aomori.

Through 165 separate acts of embezzlement, Chida siphoned off 11 million dollars between 1994 and 2001, half of which he turned over to his wife, through transfers to Chile.

Alvarado left Chida, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison. But through complex legal proceedings, the Japanese government is attempting to recuperate the 5.5 million dollars of embezzled money that he put in his wife’s hands.

Accusations that Alvarado falsified passports and trafficked Chilean girls under the age of 18 to the Japanese sex trade market are also being investigated by the courts in Santiago.

While Alvarado’s wealth stems from shady origins, it has grown at least partly due to astute investment decisions, as well as sales of her memoirs and a CD on which she sings ‘corridos’ and ‘rancheras’ (Mexican rhythms), ‘merengues’ (a popular rhythm of Dominican origin), and ‘cumbias’ (a popular Colombian rhythm).

Of the 10 songs on the album, titled ‘Anita, the Chilean Geisha’, the biggest radio hits have been ‘La gallina’ (The Chicken) and ‘El lunarcito japonés’ (Little Japanese Birthmark).

More than 8,000 copies of ‘My Name is Anita Alvarado’, a biography that two young journalists wrote about her, had been sold by mid-2002, while the CD, released late last year, has already gone platinum, selling more than 25,000 copies.

”Today our CD sales are topping 30,000 copies,” Alvarado’s representative, Dante Alesci, told IPS. ”The album was first released in Colombia, and in May will hit the market in Argentina. The book has been published in Japan, and we are also negotiating the release of the CD there.”

The ”Chilean geisha” has also earned money in recent years by posing in the nude for Japanese magazines, publishing a calendar, and appearing on TV programmes like ‘Sábados gigantes’, a Spanish-language programme taped in Miami, where she and the show’s famous host, Mario Kreutzberger, better known as ”Don Francisco”, actually argued on camera.

Alesci said Alvarado charges between 3,000 and 7,500 dollars for each TV or stage appearance.

In September 2002, the ‘Doña Geisha’ wine, a 1999 vintage cabernet sauvignon, began to be sold in Chile by businessman Eduardo Arévalo, whose ads promote the wine as a mix of ”the magic of love with the sensuality of a woman.”

Arévalo had previously launched the brands ‘Capitán General’ and ‘Don Augusto’ – allusions to General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990 – and ‘Doña Lucía’, for Lucía Hiriart, the ex-dictator’s wife.

His business instincts also led him to market ‘Osama’ wine, after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The marketing of Alvarado’s image now includes the film ‘Los debutantes’, and the ”Chilean geisha” is considering – according to unconfirmed press reports – an offer from a laboratory interested in creating ”a provocative line of perfumes and beauty creams” carrying her name.

In addition, she owns a bar, a medical centre, and at least five houses, and is an associate in a construction company with a Cuban architect. Among her future business plans figure a ‘Mall of Sex’ in the city of Concepción, 515 kms south of Santiago.

There are few public figures as popular and controversial in Chile as this 30-year-old woman who rose to fame in 2001, the year her husband was arrested in Japan, when it came to light that she owned a mansion in Chicureo, an exclusive suburb north of Santiago.

Alvarado had the 20-room luxury home, reportedly worth two million dollars, built as an imitation of the mansion that appears in ‘Gone with the Wind’, and furnished with a life-sized stuffed elephant, among other eccentricities.

The mansion was auctioned for just 450,000 dollars due to the Japanese government’s legal action. It was purchased by Chilean businessman Ricardo Romero, said to be romantically involved with Alvarado, who has four children with four different fathers, none of whom are Chilean.

”Basically, Anita Alvarado is a modern-day version of an ancient archetype, that of the courtesan – which is found in literature around the world, but had not appeared in such an open fashion in Chile,” journalist and sociologist Eduardo Santa Cruz told IPS.

”What existed here was the figure of the prostitute as a social victim, not as someone who climbs socially, triumphs and accumulates wealth,” he explained.

”I don’t know if extolling the ‘geisha’ to this extent is good for other people, because perhaps many other women now think that going to Japan and getting involved in prostitution to snag a guy with money, just to see what will happen, is simple,” Cristián Méndez, a reporter with the sensationalist daily newspaper La Cuarta, commented to IPS.

Felipe Lavanderos, an anthropologist with the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Chile’s Faculty of Social Sciences, said there was a double-voiced discourse surrounding Alvarado, who is held up as an example of ”an under-privileged woman who made good,” but condemned for her past as a sex worker.

”Anita Alvarado is practically an icon of cultural liberation in this country,” Lavanderos said to IPS. ”I have personally seen her in the street being applauded by people when she walks by, while street vendors make gifts to her of the products they are hawking.”

According to Waissbluth, ‘Los debutantes’ is ”a film on the loss of innocence,” whose central theme is two brothers who ”discover a world that corrupts them.”

The director said that while the movie was being shot, a company that helped sponsor the film by providing free lunches to the actors and crew pulled out of the project when they found out that the ”Chilean geisha” was on the cast. She then decided to cover the cost of everyone’s lunches.