Watch The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief For Free

So much average

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is a disturbing and important film that peels away many layers of meaning about the mutual manipulation that takes place between men and women. It examines love and need, but what it examines most of all is loneliness. It is a devastating critique of the phony love that is dispensed for money, and what it does both to those dispensing the money and those who profit from it.The scene of almost all the action in this film is the Rakkyo Cafe, the most popular 'host bar' in Osaka, where women seek the favours of 'host boys' such as the exploitative yet empathetically decent Issei, owner of the bar. The women spend outrageous amounts of money to be pampered and pandered to (and systematically lied to) by these highly skilled and well-groomed young men who are similar to male versions of the famous geishas. The difficulty in maintaining this kind of artifice is evidenced by the high turnover: in many of these bars in Osaka (there are about 100), 'host boys' make a lot of money, but they can't tolerate the stress and demands for very long; few last longer than a year. Despite being swarmed over by women who profess their adoration for them, the men do not get intimately involved with them. If they get too close, if they have sex with them, the men will lose their illusion of perfection, and will no longer be 'marketable'. These young women pursue a 'happiness place' a la Peter Pan's Neverland. They search for a kind of love that exists only in illusion and fantasy. Essai is an articulate and thoughtful man who understands all too well the control he has over the women. He also understands the emotional price he is paying for engaging in this activity. He 'loves' them, offers them solace, but he has become profoundly disaffected. 'I can't trust any woman any more,' he says. This superb film (director Jake Clennell offers no narration and lets his camera do all the work) shows that Issei and all of these well-paid gigolos (without the sex), as joyous as they appear on the screen, desperately want to be loved. They end their long nights at dawn, and go home alone. These shining boys and their adoring 'girlfriends' are, in the end, desperately lonely people.This film, in a larger sense, is a metaphor for modern society as a whole. In the midst of plenty, loneliness and alienation abound.

A wonderful look at the world of hosting in Osaka, where young pretty boys preen and hone the art of fulfilling - incompletely - the fantasies of their female clients at a tragic cost. In a refreshing change from the trend of centering every documentary on the documentary's maker, Jake Clennell stays off camera and is rarely heard. The staff and clientèle of host club Rakkyo Café are free to reveal their stories and insights without interference or dramatizations. Neither are needed as the stories are riveting. Unappreciated sacrifices and unfulfilled desires clash with deceit and opportunism in an atmosphere ruled by cold business ethics and marketed emotions. Clennell structures the narratives beautifully, winding through the artifice to the underlying truth as a night at the club unfolds. By the closing scenes of spent hosts staggering home in the early Osakan morning it's hard not to empathize with their emptiness or envy their bank accounts. One of the best documentaries I've seen, the main complaint is clocking in at just over seventy minutes it's too short. Worth hunting down.

I don't know What movie that last commenter was watching, but it sure as hell wasn't this one. This is a depressing, depressing film, and you will NOT learn any sex tricks in this movie -- in fact, no one actually gets laid at these host clubs. Nor will you learn how to anything about pleasing a woman, nor anything about charm: these youngsters engage in a frightening deathlike ritual, where the traditional courtship rituals are endlessly repeated, completely emptied out of any spontaneity or novelty."I would die for Issei" -- one girl proclaims -- little wonder, since every single one of their actions seem to reach out for death.Is Japan the death intrinsic to modern life? The naiveté of more maddeningly superficial examinations of Japan (e.g. the insufferable Lost in Translation) attempt to delimit the borders of life and death in terms of the most superficial and ethnocentric terms. But, the power of documentary comes from the ultimate NEGATING of racial difference in search of a more fundamental ground for the determination of life and death -- and in the sympathy in which these characters are portrayed and the philosophical clarity in which these characters speak (The Japanese, introspective, sentimental, and highly educated, are naturally drawn towards a certain form of philosophy) we find the possibility of thinking the death of all civilizations.

The world of hosting is little known outside of Japan, that of glamorous host boys even less. Jake Clennell's mind-boggling documentary is so hypnotic that single young men may want to take notes, and those who are partnered do the same to learn better how to please the female psyche.The 'hosts' in any of ten exclusive clubs in Osaka only make money if they can be charming and engaging while selling champagne at $500 a bottle. Although there are maybe 100 host clubs, most of them provide female companions for light conversation, company, and laughter (not necessarily sex - which is generally provided from a number of different establishments). Issei, however, presides over a Cafe Rakkyo club, where glamorous host boys, not women, do the entertaining. They make beautiful young women laugh, smile and feel good about themselves - women who pay very handsomely for the pleasure. They party till they drop, women competing with each other for the host boys' attention by spending more money."For girls, we are products," says Issei. "We have fake love relationships," and he compares his job to that of Peter Pan, who took people to a world that doesn't exist. "We sell dreams - that's our job." We witness candid interviews with the host boys, including a new lad being interviewed for a job, and also a number of the good-looking young women who frequent the host bars. They confess to how they fall in love with Issei. He, in return, says how although he may have sex with the girls, he often tries not to if that's their aim, because afterwards they are more likely to 'dump him.' Some of these customers have been coming to the club for several years. They pay by the hour for the attention of one of the host boys at the 24hr party room, but he will often be in demand by several women at once. If a woman wants to speak to a host privately, there is a special chair at extra cost ($50). Issei earns about $50,000 a month. He says the thing that stops him earning more is that he cares about his clients and won't let them spend too much money just for the sake of it. He talks about 'healing' his customers Why do the girls come? "When I'm at a host club, I'm treated like a princess," says one. When they have been coming for a year or more, they often look to their chosen host for good advice. A girl never changes host within a club, so a long term 'relationship' of sorts develops. In this high-octane party atmosphere girls spend $1,000 or more in a single day. Issei says the highest was £40,000. "It's about how much girls want to financially worship me," he says. "He listens to me, he entertains me. That makes me really happy," she explains. We see some of the host boys out in the street persuading girls to come for a drink to the club. They have the charisma of TV personalities. The rapid fire conversation and banter is expertly aimed to make the girls smile and feel magnetically drawn to them. In a way it is quite selfless (if highly paid!) and Issei explains that if a host really develops personal needs towards a customer then he can't be effective as a host.One customer explains how she would be prepared to die for Issei. "To a certain extent, money can buy love," he tells the interviewer with a calm conviction that is slightly unnerving. Only later in the film do we find out more about the girls and how many of them play an equally dangerous game.The subject matter, the honesty and insight of the interviews, and the dervishlike way the winning lines are so hard to explain away, together with a very sure documentary hand that inserts no moral judgements, make The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief an unforgettable piece of film-making.