REC 67%: Mezon do Himiko [2005]

Director: Isshin Inudou

How a culture deals with its aging population and how it relates to its gay community are two measures of its humanity. The latest film from Isshin Inudo, who specializes in offbeat comedy, asks how Japan's aging homosexuals will fare, and the answer is, with the same outsider resilience that got them through life thus far. The House of Himiko is a beautiful seaside rest home for gay men, founded by the former proprietor of a legendary Ginza transvestite bar. Moving slowly through his domain, the stone-faced aging beauty in flowing kimono faces death from cancer. A devoted young assistant, Haruhiko, tricks Himiko's long-estranged daughter Saori into working at the home, which is populated by everyone from gentlemen chess players who spent a lifetime hiding their sexuality to cross-dressers whose burden of female identity has driven them “flaming.” Mezon do Himiko is a movie about the desire to love, and to die, as one chooses.