‘Lost Girls and Love Hotels’ Review: Love, Life, and Depression in Tokyo
“Lost Girls and Love Hotels” perfectly captures the love story that finds you when you need it the most and changes your entire world before leaving you broken. Through a glossy finish, the film shows an upfront & honest look at depression and how some choose to confront that pain.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Based on the novel of the same name and screenplay penned by the author (Catherine Hanrahan,) “Lost Girls and Love Hotels” follows Margaret (Alexandra Daddario) as she drifts aimlessly through her life as an English teacher in Tokyo, searching for feeling at the bottom of a bottle and sex with strangers. That is until she meets Kazu (Takehiro Hira), a handsome Yakuza, and everything changes.
While the film doesn’t outright say Margaret has depression, all the signs are there. The most obvious is her use of vices to numb or displace her feelings. Heavy drinking into the night before wandering the streets of Tokyo looking for a stranger to use in her BDSM fantasy so she can feel something for once. And because of these vices, she shows up to work late and sloppy, not caring about how she presents herself to her straight-laced students and co-workers. This lack of care for appearance also presents a clear-cut sign of depression, manifesting in Margaret’s disinterest in keeping her apartment clean.
The use of color and lighting throughout the film mirrors her depressive peaks and valleys in a strikingly beautiful way. As she lives her life attempting to find some type of solace in reckless decisions, her world is dark bars and love hotels lit in neon primary colors. Once Kazu enters and they begin to fall in love, Margaret’s world is brightly lit and lives in the daytime. As their relationship changes and Margaret ebbs in and out of depression with those changes, the color and lighting follow suite.
The film’s pacing adds to the emotion Daddario expertly radiates on screen. Beginning slow and melancholy, Margaret goes through her daily routine of work, bar, sex, repeat. Just as slowly, the film gives itself the room to breathe with the tender and intimate moments of a couple falling in love before ramping up to a faster pace once Margaret descends back into depression and recklessness when Kazu leaves.
With the introduction that Kazu is a Yakuza, or Japanese gangster, the film teases a danger that it never quite fulfills. When there is danger, it is for the briefest of moments during the film’s climax and only hints at how dangerous Kazu can be. Instead of utilizing how powerful he is and the danger that comes with that power, the film uses Japanese tradition and Kazu’s impending marriage as the tension on the couple’s affair. Adding to Margaret’s depressive spiral and questioning of how Kazu feels about her.
In one of the film’s most heartbreaking moments, Kazu takes Margaret to Buddha’s womb, or Zuigudo Hall, a room underneath the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. There, visitors walk through the pitch black to a stone that gives off an eerie glow and the room’s only source of light. It is believed that the experience of walking through the darkness will make the visitor ‘reborn’, having faced the fear of navigating through the darkness to the light.
Kazu sees how lost Margaret is and takes her here in the hopes she will understand the gravity of the experience, to help her move through the depression that grips her to be ‘reborn’. The naïve Margaret, wrapped up in her love for Kazu, doesn’t quite grasp what he is showing her until her lowest point at the film’s climactic moment. There she finally realizes what Kazu was trying to show her. The film closes on a voiceover from Margaret that extends a more hopeful tone to her opening lines from the beginning of the film: “I tell myself there is no happy ending. All the pieces do not fit together perfectly. Things are ragged and messy. We are torn apart by events, put back together differently by others. But somehow everything’s beautiful."
While ending with a hopeful message that it can get better, “Lost Girls and Love Hotels” still feels empty in a way that is hard to place, similar to how one feels when they are in a low of their depression. The beautiful cinematography and slow & steady pacing put the audience in Margaret’s headspace as she navigates love, loss, and Tokyo.
“Love Girls & Lost Hotels” is available on Digital and On-Demand this Friday