Love Hotel (1968 film)

Love Hotel
Theatrical poster for Love Hotel (1968)
Directed by	Shin'ya Yamamoto[1]
Production company	Tōkyō Kōei
Distributed by	Shintōhō Eiga
Release date	September 1968 (1968-09)
Running time	71 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Love Hotel (アベック旅館, Avec Ryokan) aka Jitsuwa Repōto: Avec Ryojō (実話レポート　アベック旅情)[1] and A Rendezvous Hotel[2] is a 1968 Japanese pink film directed by Shin'ya Yamamoto.

Synopsis

When a prostitute at a love hotel passes out drunk, the voluptuous madam who owns the establishment must serve in her place.[3]

Cast

• Mieko Tanabe as Toyoko[4]
• Kako Tachibana as Rumi
• Akiko Kozuki as Rinko
• Kyoko Ikeda as Hiromi
• Jun Yoshida

Background

Director Shin'ya Yamamoto is known as one of the "Founding Fathers" of the pink film.[5] In his Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, Jasper Sharp credits Yamamoto with almost single-handedly injecting the element of light-hearted fun into pink cinema.[6] His earliest films were in the serious and often misogynistic tone of many pink films of the era. Critics judged such early Yamamoto films as Degenerate (1967), Torture by a Woman (1967), and The Rapist (1968) to be technically superior to much of the pink product of the time, but not distinguished from them in terms of theme or style.[7]

Yamamoto filmed Love Hotel for Tōkyō Kōei and it was released theatrically in Japan by Shintōhō Eiga in September 1968.[1] With this film, Yamamoto found the style which would make him one of the most popular pink film directors for the next decade.[7] His films of this period, such as the 15-film Widow's Boarding House series and his "Women's Onsen" films, are known for an interest in people living in group settings, and for a light, comical touch which was in direct contrast to most contemporary pink cinema, which tended to be darker in subject-matter.[8][9] Even more so than the Widow's Boarding House scenario, which has been taken up by other directors, Yamamoto's Molester's Train series, which he started in 1975, has proven a prolific series of pink comedies. Academy Award-winning director Yōjirō Takita made the series his own in the 1980s, and Molester's Train films were still being made in the new millennium.[9]

Bibliography

English

• Avec riyokan (1968) at IMDb
• "AVEC RIYOKAN". Complete Index to World Film. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
• Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications. pp. 251–252. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.

Japanese

• 実話レポート アベック旅情 (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
• アベック旅館 (in Japanese). Japanese Cinema Database (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Retrieved 2010-04-12.

Notes

1. 実話レポート アベック旅情 (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
2. "AVEC RIYOKAN". Complete Index to World Film. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
3. Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books : Asian Cult Cinema Publications. pp. 251–252. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.
4. Cowie, Peter, ed. (1977). "Japan". World Filmography 1968. London: Tantivy Press. p. 357. ISBN 0-904208-36-2.
5. Weisser, p. 504.
6. Sharp, Jasper (2008). Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Guildford: FAB Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-903254-54-7.
7. Weisser, p. 110.
8. Weisser, pp. 110, 251-252, 504.
9. Sharp, p. 66.