Happy New Year! If you have sobered up but not quite ready to let go of the festive spirit, this movie may be the one for you. Set on a hectic New Year's Eve in a prestigious hotel in Japan, The Uchoten Hotel is said to reference and resemble the old 1932 classic, Grand Hotel. Since I haven't had a chance to watch that film, I would liken this movie, with its weirdness and awkwardness and intricate ensemble plot, to films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, but less visually stunning, or a Love Actually, but with a better theme song and without all the cheesy romantic happily ever afters.
This may be the best film of the famous Japanese director, Koki Mitani, who, similar to Wes Anderson in many ways, is known for his unique style of quirky comedy and his stables of frequent and super famous collaborators. His films always have casts that rival NHK's Taiga dramas.
And on this New Year's Eve, everyone is in this hotel: a prominent politician embroiled in a corruption and sex scandal and the media that's hounding him, a hotel maid pretending to be someone's mistress to relive her past glory days as the mistress of the aforementioned politician, a suicidal and eccentric folk-song megastar who is past his time, a hotel bellboy who is quitting his job and giving up his unfulfilled dream of being a megastar, an escort who slips in and out of the hotel seeking her next target, a guest of the honour who thinks he is being blackmailed by the aforementioned escort, and a most capable hotel manager who, besides dealing with all these characters and their shenanigans, has to impress both his boss to get a promotion and his estranged ex-wife who happens to be a guest in the hotel. Not crazy enough! How about a mystery subplot involving the hotel sleuth and a runaway duck. The whole thing is just wacky, cringing, and fun. But within this convoluted wackiness, you get to glimpse slices of life in the Japanese society: the unreasonable attentiveness of the service industry, the prevalence of suicide, the celebrity and media culture, the social norm and consequences of mistress-keeping and separation payment or escort and blackmails, and the length some people will go just to save face. This movie explores every nook and cranny of the hotel and in the process shed a comedic light into some really dark corners of the modern Japanese culture.
Watch it and have a Happy New Year!
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