Love Hotel
ラブホテル
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Two years after he meant to die and take her with him, a ruined man tracks down the call girl he assaulted — Somai's long takes of two lost people.
Tetsuro Muraki's small publishing house has gone bankrupt, and the yakuza collecting his debts have raped his wife, Ryoko. He decides to die. First he takes a room at a love hotel and sends for a call girl: he means to violate her and then die, taking her with him. The woman who comes is Nami. He handcuffs her, threatens her with a knife and sexually assaults her, but as the night goes on the will to die drains out of him, and he leaves without doing it.
Two years later Muraki drives a taxi. He has divorced Ryoko so that the collectors will leave her alone, but she still waits for him after his shifts. He has never stopped looking for Nami, and when he finds her he contrives to pick her up as a fare. She asks to be driven to the sea at night and, at the beach, tries to take her own life. He pulls her back, tells her he is the man from that night, and says she was an angel to him.
Nami works in a clothes shop and is caught in an affair with her married boss, Ohta. After Ohta's wife, Masayo, storms in and abuses her, Nami tells Muraki a lie: a yakuza called Ohta is holding her photographs and papers over her. Muraki believes her and forces his way into Ohta's apartment, where the bewildered wife hands him a private detective's report.
Nami begs him to finish what they began two years before. They meet in the same hotel and make love, but the closer they come, the further apart they drift. Muraki learns that she lied and forgives her. When Nami wakes, he is gone, and his apartment is empty. On the stairs as she leaves, she passes Ryoko, who does not yet know that he has vanished. The two women stop, look at each other for a moment, and walk off in different directions.
Starring
Noriko Hayamias Nami Tsuchiya
The call girl summoned on the night Muraki means to die, who two years later is stuck in an affair with her married boss.
Nami Tsuchiya’s story
Nami arrives at a love hotel as a hired woman, and the man waiting there, Muraki, handcuffs her, threatens her with a knife and sexually assaults her, then leaves. Two years later she works in a clothes shop, stuck with her married boss, Ohta, whose wife storms in and abuses her in front of customers. A taxi driver takes her to the sea at night and stops her when she tries to take her own life; he is the man from that night. She lies that a yakuza named Ohta is holding her photographs, and begs him to finish what they began. She comes to the same hotel in the same clothes, carrying the handcuffs. When she wakes, he has gone. On the stairs of his empty flat she passes his wife, and each walks away.
Minori Teradaas Tetsuro Muraki
A bankrupt publisher who planned to die after yakuza raped his wife, now a taxi driver who cannot forget Nami.
Tetsuro Muraki’s story
Muraki means to die, and to take a hired woman with him. At a love hotel he handcuffs Nami, threatens her with a knife and sexually assaults her, but as the night goes on the will to die leaves him. Two years later he has divorced his wife, Ryoko, to keep his debt collectors away from her, though she still waits for him after his shifts. He has never stopped looking for Nami. Finding her, he picks her up as if by chance, stops her from taking her own life and tells her she was an angel to him. He believes her lie about a yakuza and forces his way into Ohta's flat. They meet again at the old hotel. He learns that she lied, and forgives her. While she sleeps he disappears, from her life and from Ryoko's.
Kiriko Shimizuas Ryoko Muraki
Muraki's wife, raped by his debt collectors and divorced for her own protection, who still waits for him after work.
Nobutaka Masutomias Kiyoshi Ohta
Nami's married boss and lover, whom her lie to Muraki turns into a blackmailing yakuza.
Rie Nakagawaas Masayo Ohta
Ohta's wife, who storms into Nami's shop and later hands Muraki a detective's report without knowing why.
Why it matters
Love Hotel was made for Nikkatsu's Roman Porno line, whose house format called for a sex scene about every ten minutes, and it opens on what that format promises: a hired woman, handcuffs, a knife. Then it gives most of its length to the people that night leaves behind. Debt, a wife raped as a form of payment, a husband's shame at failing her, a woman whose only proof that she is needed is a stranger who once meant to take her with him into death: Shinji Somai films it all in long takes that leave the actors nowhere to hide. The script is Takashi Ishii's, one of his many stories of a woman called Nami and a man called Muraki, and the film took first place at the Yokohama Film Festival. It ends not with the lovers but with two women on a staircase, each marked by what men did to her, recognising each other for a moment.