It isn’t your typical wellness retreat. On an otherwise deserted island, two men and a woman spend their days engaged in a rigorous regime designed to purge them of all earthly desires. They meditate, analyze each others’ dreams, attempt to cultivate telepathy and eat a strictly — albeit haphazardly — controlled diet.
They’re members of a cult, the Smiley Life Center, which explains the cheerful emoticon designs adorning the regulation-issue T-shirts that each of them wears. Real names are forbidden: They know each other simply as “Chairman” (Shohei Uno), “Vice-chairman” (Yui Kitamura) and “Operator” (Hayato Isomura), the lowliest member of this peculiar little clan.
Despite the trio’s best efforts, the outside world has an awkward tendency of intruding on their sanctum, whether in the form of a boatload of drunken pleasure-seekers or a tabloid magazine that gets washed up on the shore and reveals unwelcome truths about the cult’s leadership.