The Great Happiness Space is Osaka’s Rakkyo Café: a club run by ambitious young entrepreneur Issei, where a core staff of 20 young men are groomed to become the top male escorts in the city. But contrary to expectations, these boy-toys are (mostly) heterosexual, and their clients are strictly female: attractive young women who are willing to spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on these sharp-dressing, smooth-talking young men – buying their time, `financially worshipping` them, in return for `sweet conversation` and … ahem, other services. A cold-eyed study of love for sale, this is one of the most puzzling, paradoxical, and provocative documentaries of the year. –Edinburgh Film Festival
intensely interesting doc that made me think a lot about caring labor and gender in ways that i had not considered before; a dystopic landscape where intimacy is exchanged at a ferocious rate. and all told in a way that was at once frightening, compassionate, alienating, and somehow very moving.
