Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, August 12: LOVE HOTEL
Philip Cox and Hikaru Toda’s inside look at a discreet Japanese cultural mainstay premiered at Hot Docs this Spring. The doc has gone on to screen at Melbourne, NY Asian American, and Biografilm. FilmBuff now releases the film on various VOD platforms.
The tradition of short-term stay hotels or teahouses that facilitate sexual encounters has a long history in Japan. As Cox and Toda’s intimate film demonstrates, however, a recent conservative turn in the government threatens to make them a thing of the past. Against this backdrop, the film focuses on a single establishment, Osaka’s Angelo Love Hotel. As its staff contends with the “entertainment police” and their increasingly restrictive regulations, the hotel hosts several patrons, including a middle-aged couple trying to jumpstart their lovelife, a pair of closeted gay lawyers seeking privacy, a lonely older man, and a dominatrix servicing unsatisfied married men. Liberated by their surroundings, these and other customers demonstrate surprising candor, making an argument for the value of such establishments in a society that tends to downplay individual desires.
what (not) to doc 