Somai shoots this artful Nikkatsu Roman Porno effort with trademark long takes, fusing eroticism with a sense of fate and lingering despair in the sexual encounters between a suicidal man and a woman prostituting herself for the first time.
Review #3,036
Dir. Shinji Somai
1985 | Japan | Drama | 88min | 1.66:1 | Japanese
R21 (passed clean) for sexual scenes and sexual violence
Cast: Noriko Hayami, Minori Terada, Kiriko Shimizu
Plot: In a fit of despair, Muraki decides to kill himself and a prostitute he has picked up. However, he loses his nerve and doesn’t go through with it. Two years later, he runs into her again.
Awards: –
Distributor: Nikkatsu
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Mature – Sexual Encounters; Unlikely Connection; Fate & Despair
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Cult Arthouse
Viewed: Screener (as part of Japanese Film Festival)
Spoilers: No
My impression of Shinji Somai largely comes from his two terrific later works—namely, Moving (1993) and The Friends (1994)—which center on the child’s perspective in the face of adult matters like divorce and mortality, respectively.
As such, watching Love Hotel feels like a surreal affair. Well, because it is ‘adult’ in another sense, as Somai explores the Roman Porno subgenre that Nikkatsu made infamous in the ‘70s. (In fact, he had assistant director credits for several pictures during that time.)
Known to be a master of evocative long takes, Somai uses that very same filmic language in this pinku eiga, thus elevating it artfully into something quite unlike the B-grade schlock that usually transpires in this cult genre.
Love Hotel is still rightfully titillating, but there is a quiet, lingering despair experienced by the two leads, Yumi and Tetsuro. The latter, suicidal after the yakuza raped his wife for an unpaid debt, decides to call a prostitute for a violent and kinky no-holds-barred rendezvous.
“You don’t know that I’m an angel. That I’m a good girl.”
Somai’s film moves ahead several years later, with Yumi (now called Nami) and Tetsuro having a chance encounter again. Written by Takashi Ishii (who is no stranger to pinku movies), Love Hotel is a case of fateful meetings that change the course of one’s life, for better or worse.
The use of recurring interior locations gives a sense of the inability to let go and the perverse desire to relive trauma, albeit in potentially liberating ways.
The poignant use of sentimental songs helps to undergird the human connection between Yumi/Nami and Tetsuro, even as they bare their bodies to themselves and the camera without any hint of inhibition.
Somai’s observational long takes mean that the rather numerous sexual scenes and excessive nudity are played out to their logical extreme (it’s the kind that pushes the R21 rating to the very max).
A curious oddity from a remarkably underrated filmmaker, it is interesting to note that Love Hotel was one of three feature films Somai directed in 1985—the other two were Typhoon Club and Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion.
Grade: B+
Music:
Eternality Tan 