Drunk on Sunday, hungover on Monday. The morning after China inebriated us with spectacle in the Olympics finale – courtesy of moviemaker-turned-Beijing-Barnum Zhang Yimou – we woke to reality with a splitting headache, writes Nigel Andrews. Was it the end of the wonder show? Was it the start of the London countdown? Did those acrobats really form that beautiful pulsing, orchidaceous tower? Did Boris and Becks and a London bus really make prats of themselves?

As a film critic I recommend the hair of the dog. Mika Ninagawa’s Sakuran, from Japan, is another helping of Oriental spectacle, smaller in dosage but with a fair kick to the senses. It will cure your headache and restart your metabolism. Ninagawa’s better-known career as a fashion/advertising photographer should prepare you for this visual delirium: a sequence of tableaux coloured like stained glass, costumed like Fellini outtakes and narrating the rise and almost ruin of an oiran – glorified geisha – in 18th-century Yoshiwara, Tokyo’s Edo-period red light quarter.