Starfish Hotel
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Profile
- Movie: Starfish Hotel
- Japanese: スターフィッシュホテル
- Director: John Williams
- Writer: John Williams
- Producer:
- Cinematographer: Benito Strangio
- Release Date: February 3, 2007 (Japan)
- Runtime: 98 min.
- Language: Japanese
- Country: Japan
Plot
Yuichi Arisu slaves away in a cold, geometrical office everyday, in a humdrum job, somewhere in the huge, impersonal city of Tokyo. Every night he commutes home to his distant wife, and buries himself in the mystery novels of Jo Kuroda, a writer who has conjured up a strange alternative universe called the Darkland.
Then, one night, Arisu’s wife disappears. The following day he falls asleep on the train on his way home and wakes in a siding to find Jo Kuroda sitting opposite him. The writer persuades Arisu to tell his own story. So begins a second story about events that took place two years ago in a snow-bound town in the far north of Japan. There, in the eerie, crumbling Starfish Hotel Arisu begins an affair with a young woman called Kayoko.
Is Arisu’s story a memory, a dream or just a story? As the plot in the past unfolds, the present-day story of the search for his wife also becomes more and more bizarre. Arisu traces his wife to a private detective and then to an underground brothel called Wonderland. But the brothel burns down and the detective is murdered. Arisu becomes the main suspect in a murder case. Then the walls between fantasy and reality break down completely when Arisu stumbles into the Darkland…
Awards
- Grand Prix Cinénygma (Best Film) – Luxembourg International Film Festival (2006)
- Best Art Direction (Jury Award) – Austin Fantastic Fest (2006)
Cast
- Koichi Sato - Arisu
- Tae Kimura - Chisato
- KIKI - Kayoko
- Akira Emoto - Mr. Trickster
- Kazuyoshi Kushida - Kuroda
- Toshiki Ayata
- Genta Dairaku
- Saori Kitagawa
- Koichi Ueda
- Natsuki Kunimoto
