Sep. 18, 2020|Japan|97 Min.|R
Genre: Drama
Description: Margaret, an American expatriate living in Tokyo, Japan, leads a double life. By day, she teaches English pronunciation to aspiring flight attendants at a Japanese flight academy. By night, she drowns herself in alcohol with her expatriate friends, Ines and Liam, and seeks fleeting, submissive encounters with strangers in the city’s love hotels. Her reckless behavior leaves her disheveled and unfocused at work, worrying her instructor, Nakamura.
Her life takes a turn when she meets Kazu, a Yakuza enforcer, and the two begin a relationship. Despite learning that Kazu is about to marry out of duty rather than love, Margaret becomes involved with him. She opens up about her troubled past: her father abandoned the family, her mother passed away from cancer, and she has a schizophrenic brother. Margaret moved to Japan to escape her past and find solitude.
On the day of her students’ graduation, Kazu convinces Margaret to skip the ceremony and spend the day with him in Kyoto. They visit the Kiyomizu-dera temple, where Kazu shows her the “Buddha’s womb,” a symbolic stone meant to represent rebirth and letting go of trauma. However, Margaret remains unaffected. On their return to Tokyo, Kazu disappears while she sleeps, leaving her heartbroken and desperate to find him. Returning to work, she discovers she has been fired for missing the graduation, plunging her into further despair.
Cast director: William Olsson
Cast actor: Alexandra Daddario, Takehiro Hira, Carice van Houten, Dasha Teranishi, Mariko Tsutsui, Anastasia Nasu, Andrew Rothney, Elisabeth Larena, Asuka Kurosawa, Kate Easton
Original name: Lost Girls & Love Hotels