Café Rakkyo is a host pub, where young men act as hosts to young women
who pay them for their time. This can involve sex but a good host will
keep that for as long as possible because often a customer will leave
him and not come back once she has had everything he can offer. The
hosts earn about US$10,000 – US$50,000 each month and are mostly young
men. The owner of the Raffyo café is Issei, one of the most popular
hosts out of his staff of twenty, acts as our way into this strange
world of underground love and friendship.
A supremely odd film this one, well, a film of a supremely odd world
anyway. I cannot think of anything like it in the UK. Even with the
sexes reversed, strip clubs and escorts are very much about money for
sex or sexual favours, I can't think of services where women can hang
around with men in clubs in the way I saw within this film. I think the
film recognises this because it structures itself as a gentle way in to
the world for the uninitiated. At first the film just explains it and
lets us see the club, listen to the hosts and the girls who come for
their company talking about love and longing. However the "twists" come
once we understand as the film starts to push below the superficial
workings of the club and get a bit more into the people who pay and get
paid.
Most of the girls we hear from seem to work in a similar industry as
the male hosts and their reasons for going to the club seems to be as
part of a healing process. The overwhelming impression is of how fake
it all is and how empty the lives be. It put me in mind of the line
from Common's most recent album where he talks about a stripper when he
says "at first stripping seemed so empowering, Most every girl wanna do
it now and then, But being meat every day is devouring" because you can
see the emotional damage being done within this world where everything
is purchased and a transaction – everyone seems to want the real thing
but nobody has it. Some show the cracks but most have it hidden but it
does come out – the film wisely keeps the signs of stress and damage
till the end, again giving a strong structure.
Overall a very good film about a very strange world. Being so remote
from this sort of experience the film could have left me cold but the
structure of the film makes it work really well and produces an
interesting and quite emotional documentary.
ASTROOO
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