Aimless and untethered, Margaret (Alexandra Daddario) falls to self destruction in the hollow shadows of underground Tokyo, spending her days as a popular English teacher in a flight attendant school while she drifts into the darkness at night, searching for meaning in anything she does. This leads her to seedy bars and the company of expats and the unfiltered abandon of love hotels and sexual decay before she meets Kazu (Takehiro Hira) and feels the lure of love.
Based on the novel of the same name by Catherine Hanrahan, director William Olsson‘s newest effort, Lost Girls & Love Hotels will certainly show its roots, owing at least some of its existence to the likes of Lost in Translation, but does find its own path in the character of Margaret, a young woman who takes a different approach to her loneliness. Like the presence of Scarlett Johansson in Translation, it is Daddario who takes command of the dark material and sinks to levels we’ve never quite seen her at before.
What works best about this that there is no passion in Margaret’s sexual cravings, the film careful to keep her longings for domination less a fantasy than a painful addiction, one that increasingly begins to deteriorate the already unstable threads of her daylife. Daddario embraces this kind of haunting, allowing herself to subtly cave in on herself, creating a resonance about Margaret that is strikingly affecting.
This is matched by Hira, who, if you’re not familiar, is a popular television star in Japan, delivering the kind of mysterious liberation perhaps his character is almost naturally imbued with yet leveling a humanity in it all by its ends that works well. This is not a romance film and it’s not the sexual thriller it sort of portends it to be from the trailer. Instead it is a desperate drama about the consequences of her abandon and maybe still, the futility of labelling what defines the very meaning and search for happiness.
Hanrahan adapts her own work, which clearly helps, and Olsson’s earnest direction is more attentive to Margaret’s triangular relationships with school, expat colleagues, and sex than taking us on a sideshow tour of Japan, refusing to celebrate the “exotic” location but rather embed us in it. That works well in dragging us deeper into the complicated bond Margaret tenuously builds with Kazu, who is a powerful member of the Yakuza and well, much more that has further crippling consequences for Margaret, who slowly and traumatically slips into oblivion.
Despite the premise and overt sexual overtones of Lost Girls & Love Hotels, this is not a film interested in showcasing its star for her flesh, rather taking the meaning of “naked” to a literal meaning, stripping Margaret to the very core of vulnerability. Daddario has always seemed like a talent that has been kept somewhat suppressed as roles take advantage of her physical beauty, so it’s great to see her given the chance to take what could have been exploitive and instead shape Margaret into a complex and greatly damaged character.
While Lost Girls & Love Hotels might not satisfy those looking for another raucous sexual thriller, it earns its potency as a drama nonetheless, carefully staging Margaret’s descent with a kind of romanticized personal immolation that has surprising impact. Highly recommended.
Love Girls & Lost Hotels is available on Digital and On-Demand this Friday