Taglines: It’s yours, it’s you.
Lost Girls and Love Hotels movie storyline. Disillusioned with the world she knows, a woman searches for meaning and affirmations of life with a dashing Yakuza gangster in Tokyo. Margaret finds herself in the glittering labyrinth of Tokyo by night and as a respected English teacher of a Japanese flight attendant academy by day.
With little life direction, She searches for meaning with fellow ex-pat Ines in a Japanese dive bar, drinking to remember to forget and losing herself in love hotel encounters with men who satisfy a fleeting craving. When she crosses paths with Kazu, a dashing yakuza, she falls in love with him despite the danger and tradition that hinders their chances of being together. We follow her through the dark and light of love and what it means to find oneself abroad with a youthful abandon.
Lost Girls & Love Hotels is a 2020 American erotic drama film directed by William Olsson from a screenplay by Catherine Hanrahan, based on Hanrahan’s 2006 novel Lost Girls and Love Hotels. The film stars Alexandra Daddario as an American English teacher in Tokyo, who loses herself to the city’s nightlife and begins an affair with a member of the Yakuza gangs. It was released through video on demand on September 18, 2020, by Astrakan Film AB.
About the Story
Margaret is an American expatriate living in Tokyo. During the day, she works at a Japanese academy teaching prospective flight attendants how to speak English. She spends her nights getting drunk with fellow expatriates Ines and Liam and seeks out submissive sexual encounters with random men in the city’s numerous love hotels. Her misadventures cause her to sometimes show up to work in a daze and disheveled, drawing the concern of her manager, Nakamura. However, Nakamura sees something of her younger self in Margaret and is sympathetic.
One day, Margaret crosses paths with a Yakuza enforcer named Kazu, and the two begin a relationship. Margaret is at first taken aback by Kazu’s revelation that he is about to get married, but she continues with him after he admits that his marriage is more out of duty than love. Margaret confides to Kazu that she does not have a family: her father left when she was a child, her mother died from cancer, and she has a schizophrenic brother. She came to Japan to be alone.
On the day of graduation for Margaret’s students at the flight academy, Kazu asks Margaret to spend the entire day with him in Kyoto. Initially reluctant to skip graduation, Margaret agrees when he says he will not get another day, and they take the train. He brings her to the Kiyomizu-dera temple and shows her the “Buddha’s womb”, a stone illuminated at the end of a pitch-black tunnel.
Kazu explains the symbolism of being reborn by reaching the stone and says that he has brought Margaret there hoping to help her let go of her trauma, but Margaret seems unaffected. On the train ride back to Tokyo, Kazu leaves the train while Margaret is asleep, leaving her despondent and desperate to find him when she wakes up. When she returns to work the next day, she finds that she has been dismissed and replaced.
Margaret spirals down further when Ines reveals to her that she is leaving Japan. Following numerous meaningless sexual encounters, Margaret spots Kazu with his family by chance one day and follows him into a love hotel. Kazu reprimands Margaret for following him, telling her nothing can happen between them. When Margaret insists that she loves him, they have sex one more time before he sends her away, leaving him saddened and conflicted. When Margaret returns to her apartment she finds an eviction notice. She desperately takes a job as a bar hostess for drunken businessmen, but finds herself unable to participate and leaves without getting paid.
Now homeless and at rock bottom, Margaret is found on the street by Liam’s girlfriend Louise, who reveals that Liam has been deported. After sharing a drink with Louise, Margaret gets drunk and begins wandering around Tokyo aimlessly at night until she notices a strange man following her. She asks him to take her to a love hotel. She tells him that she likes to be submissive. On his orders she strips naked and lies down, the stranger then tying her hands and feet to the bed.
Lost Girls and Love Hotels (2020)
Directed by: William Olsson
Starring: Alexandra Daddario, Takehiro Hira, Misuzu Kanno, Andrew Rothney, Yasunari Takeshima, Kate Easton, Haruka Imo, Carice van Houten, Anastasia Nasu, Asuka Kurosawa, Luke Bridgford
Screenplay by: Catherine Hanrahan
Production Design by: Arad Sawat
Cinematography by: Kenji Katori
Film Editing by: Sarah Flack
Costume Design by: Tony Crosbie
Set Decoration by: Keisuke Sakurai
Art Direction by: Kikuo Ohta
Music by: Ola Fløttum
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, nudity, and language,
Distributed by: Astrakan Film AB
Release Date: September 18, 2020 (United States)
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