LOVE HOTEL
Realizador Phil Cox Hikaru Toda
Países France, United Kingdom
Duração 75 min
Sinopse
Japanese Love Hotels are secretive labyrinths filled with intimate stories of strangers. The Angel Hotel in Osaka is one such place. It is not a brothel, but in a conformist society, it is only here where, with wife, mistress, group, partner or alone, people of all ages may unlock their desires and without judgment – ‘love’ and ‘be’ how they wish. This film follows everyday citizens of Osaka from the intimacy of the rooms into their outside realities, revealing the tensions between public/private, fantasy/real and the boundaries in between. They are a married couple, a nurse, gay lawyers, dominatrix and a pensioner. Unaware of each other, they come to the Love Hotel where their anonymity is protected, but all share the same longingness to love and be loved. Their conversations, sexual expressions, and playful acts range from the tragic and tender, to the mundane, comic and erotic set in the other-worldly spaces of 'concept' rooms ranging from SM room to jungle room. Tending to their every needs, the hotel’s manager, Tomokazu Ozawa is fighting to save his remaining few ‘concept’ rooms both from ever more conservative right wing political forces and the hotel management eager for more profits. Navigating through darkened back corridors and the monitor room, him and his elderly staff all in their 80s have to improve profits or risk losing their jobs. The harsh reality of conservative and capitalist society collide with the escapist tendencies in one building of the Angel Hotel as they fight for their survival.
Japanese Love Hotels are secretive labyrinths filled with intimate stories of strangers. The Angel Hotel in Osaka is one such place. It is not a brothel, but in a conformist society, it is only here where, with wife, mistress, group, partner or alone, people of all ages may unlock their desires and without judgment – ‘love’ and ‘be’ how they wish. This film follows everyday citizens of Osaka from the intimacy of the rooms into their outside realities, revealing the tensions between public/private, fantasy/real and the boundaries in between. They are a married couple, a nurse, gay lawyers, dominatrix and a pensioner. Unaware of each other, they come to the Love Hotel where their anonymity is protected, but all share the same longingness to love and be loved. Their conversations, sexual expressions, and playful acts range from the tragic and tender, to the mundane, comic and erotic set in the other-worldly spaces of 'concept' rooms ranging from SM room to jungle room. Tending to their every needs, the hotel’s manager, Tomokazu Ozawa is fighting to save his remaining few ‘concept’ rooms both from ever more conservative right wing political forces and the hotel management eager for more profits. Navigating through darkened back corridors and the monitor room, him and his elderly staff all in their 80s have to improve profits or risk losing their jobs. The harsh reality of conservative and capitalist society collide with the escapist tendencies in one building of the Angel Hotel as they fight for their survival.