From poge 13

Buitenhuis tracked down a
group of current and former
hostesses for Tokyo Girls,
Three are tram Vancouver,
one from Montreal. Each
had a slightly different per-
spective on the job.

There is Dhana, who for
years resisted the charms of
the client who eventually
became her husband, and
Jamie, who found herself
caught up with a wealthy
yakuza member. Eventually
she had to flee to a Thai
island for her own safety.

Then there are the
younger girls, the efferves-
cent, fresh-faced Hillary, and
French Canadian Nancy: “I
found it seductive to use my
femininity,” she observes,
“but also exhausting. I never
smiled so much in my life.
It’s strange for a Canadian to
just use your charm and your
smile.”

“I tried to get a cross-sec-
tion of types,” Buitenhuis
says. “I think what's in com-
mon is a lot of them don’t
seem to have too many
moral issues with doing the
job. None of them seemed
to really have too many
qualms about pretending
that they liked these men
and playing the game. If the
guys chose to fall into the
game, that’s seill their
choice, it’s not like they
don’t know that they have to
pay for this service.”

As for rumours of the
danger involved in the job,
Buitenhuis believes it exists
to some extent, but is more
a problem for locals than for
foreigners.

“Western women have a
kind of carte blanche — lit-
erally carte blanche — where
they have sort of a privileged

Friday, September 22, 2000 —- North Shore News - 15

Releasing tension in tokyo after dark

photo #': sional Film Board

HILLARY, cenire, left Vancouver for Tokyo to work as a hostess, lighting cigarettes, pouring drinks, and mak-
ing polite conversation with Japanese men.

status.”

“The whole stories about
Thai and Filipino women
being locked in plac+s and
forced tc ave sex rarely hap-
pens to Western women, just
because they're such a visible
and high-status minority. I
don’t think it’s a job that
any naive woman should do
because of what it does to
you mentally. But [ don’t
think it’s a dangerous job.”

“I found it interesting
that it cost more to be with a

hostess than to be with a
prostitute. In a culture like
Japan that's highly struc-
tured and restrictive, and
nobody’s allowed to speak
freely, and emotionally every-
body’s incredibly restrained,
there’s the whole night
world, the idea of being able
to open up at night and
release all this tension.”
“The idea of the hostess
is in a way she’s there to
have an unfettered emotional
connection with no conse-

quence on vour relationship.
“To me it was an intrigu-
ing representation of modern
culture, that we don’t even
have time to have this
romantic, fancy-free world,
which used to be quite stan-
dard in the old days, to flirt
and it be relatively harmless,
and not mean, OK now P’m
going to take you to bed.”
Buitenhuis did interview a
number of geisha. “They
didn’t even want to say host-
ess and geisha in the same

sentence,” she says, noting
the intriguing difference in
perception of the nwo from
Japanese and western men.

“A geisha is the ultimate
exotic object” to westerners,
while “the western woman,
other than in a hostess club,
is totally unattainable for
Japanese men. So to be able
to talk to them, sit with
them, it’s like being in a
movie,

“There's not a lot of his-
tory left. Japan is kind of

This one really hits the

spo

t. Two BC fresh eggs,

two country sausages, [Wo

“stvips of crispy bacon,

hashbrowns, and your

choice of buttermilk

pancakes or toast. Scart

your day off at White Spot.

shocking in the sense that
vou think of, you know,
Kurosawa movies, and these
old temples, and landscapes,

~ and when vou actually go

there, it’s actually concrete
buildings and high tech. The
old is very much sort of hid-
den, in a way.”

As an established director,
Buitenhuis works more often
on dramatic productions —
films, series, movies-of-the-
week — than documentaries.

She spent 10 years living
in Berlin and three in Paris
after she graduated from
SFU — looking for an audi-
ence more in tune with her
“leftie” politics and hoping,
she laugns, “to be the new
Fassbinder.”

Buitenhuis was lured back
to Canada by an offer to
direct Bowlerard, starring
Rae Dawn Chong and Lou
Diamond Phillips. She went
from a budget of $170,000
for her Berlin-shot feature
Trouble to $3 million for
Boulevard — and snared her-
self an agent in L.A.

Next up is a feature film
she wrote herself, called
Punk Not Dead.

She says it’s about “a
punk who was preserved in
beer for 20 yeors and comes
back in the year 2000. He
has to drink beer to survive.
It’s about the co-option of
rebellion, and what hap-
pened to rebellion, and how
rebellion has been marketed.
I guess that’s a continuing
theme of mine: what do we
do for money, living in an
era where money is God.”

Wi Tokvo Girls screens at 3
p-m. Sept. 29 and 9:30 p.m.
Sept. 30 at the Vancouver
International Film Festival.

riage
Showcase

Holliyburn
Country Club

Sept. 25-6:30pm
Free! for brides & a guest
© Fashion + Gifis
* Displays + Door Prizes

Gd
. ‘The Balloonery
. The fay - Bridal Registry
. The Bay Travel
Celtic Creations, Helen Ritchie
Cinnamon's Chocolates

. Chris falcon Design Studio
Deja View Videography

. Double Treble Bud & Heidi
Kurz

. Marlene Fehr, Basket Creations
wv. Hot Hit Productions Ld,
11. Uolfy’s on the North Shore
12. Hollybum County Club

13. Gerald Mackinon, PPL Legal
Care of Canada Corp.

14. Mirror Image Photography

15. Barb McCallum, Mary Kay
Cosmetics

16. Petals & Lace

17, Romantique

18. True Confections
19. West Van Florist

Cail Val 984-0746

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