Crossing paths with Kazu, a Yakuza enforcer, Margaret is drawn to him and they begin a relationship. Kazu tries to help Margaret with her demons, but leaves her after this fails. Margaret sinks into more increasingly self-destructive behavior, despondent after this.
Examples:
- Dark and Troubled Past: Margaret's father abandoned her, then her mother died from cancer, and her brother developed schizophrenia. That's probably the source of her depression and suicidal desires.
- Death Seeker: After the last man she goes to a love hotel with says he easily could kill her after she's been tied up to the bed, Margaret begs him to. It was foreshadowed with her love of being choked during sex.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Margaret suffers from severe depression and suffers greatly due to this during the film, with her coming close to dying. By the end though it seems she's turned this around somewhat and goes home into the US, feeling reborn.
- Erotic Asphyxiation: Margaret likes being choked during sex, saying it's all that gets her off. It's implied this is due to having a death wish too, and enjoying the sensation as a result.
- Love Hotel: The source of half the film's title. All of Margaret's many sexual encounters take place in them, mostly hooking up with random men (though she meets Kazu multiple times). Kazu also runs one, she learns.
- Ms. Fanservice: Margaret is very attractive, and shows a lot of nudity while having casual sex with men (albeit mostly from the back).
- Naughty by Night: Margaret is just an ordinary English teacher during the day. During the night, she's getting drunk or having sex in love hotels with men.
- Parental Abandonment: Margaret lost both her parents. Her dad left, then her mom died of cancer.
- Really Gets Around: Margaret has casual sex it seems almost every night of the week, hooking up with random men in love hotels.
- Tattooed Crook: Kazu, in keeping with the Yakuza tradition, is heavily tattooed all across his torso.
- Toplessness from the Back: Margaret shows herself this way multiple times after undressing.
- Yakuza: Kazu is a Yakuza member, and has the tattoos of his clan over his torso.
- Yubitsume: Discussed when Margaret asks her lover Kazu, a Yakuza member, about this practice, and he tells her what it's for.
- Wall Bang Her: The last time Margaret and Kazu have sex it's with him behind her up against a wall.
