Film rating: 4/5
Walkouts: 0/5
Pretentious clapping at credits: 3/5 (and I joined in, in a golf clap kind of way)
BPM sighting: No (although this may have been because it was a sell out)

Quite apart from how magnificent the title of this documentary is, The Great Happiness Space was easily one of the best things I have seen in this year’s festival. The documentary was a truly intimate insight into the lives and motivations of male hosts in clubs in Osaka and their female clients. The issues of trust, “love,” and guilt for misleading the women who pay thousands of dollars to spend time with the male hosts at their clubs in order to take their money are beguiling and complex. As the film progresses, you learn that many of the female clients are themselves in the hostess or prostitution business, driven to male hosts in an attempt to buy happiness and love or driven to prostitution in order to support the habit. The film is full of candid interviews - the characters reveal things to the camera that you would not expect them to reveal to anyone, given how little trust they have for almost everyone they come into contact with and how hardened they have become to human relationships. I feel for the male hosts and the female clients in the film the way you might feel for a war veteran who has been forced to kill, and kill again. No human should have to repeatedly encounter the murderous, hate-filled part of human nature, just as no human should have to deal in the cynical game of buying happiness and the illusion of love that these lost souls engage in, year after year, for a “living.” It’s incredible, how many ways we find to live a life.

As a documentary maker, I was envious and impressed at the honesty of the interviews, the consistently good observational camera work and the diligence and perserverance of the film-makers to be present in all sorts of situations which must have been emotionally taxing. As a documentary watcher, I was educated, perplexed and fascinated by the true life characters on screen and was carried along by very good editing from one theme and point of the story to another. I thoroughly recommend this film, congratulate its makers, and send hopeful prayers to its characters.