When we meet Hannah and Liv, they’re partying aboard a yacht in Australia. Suddenly penniless, the two young women find their tourist visas compromised. Under an employment program, here they are waitresses in a seedy bar-hotel lost on the borders of the Outback. Hannah and Liv have no idea what the almost exclusively male mining clientele has in store for them. After “institutional” sexual violence in The Assistant (The assistant), Kitty Green explores the “traditional” side of it in The Royal Hotel.
Because from the outset, from the overly vague warnings from the placement agent to the drunken horrors uttered by the clients, including the words of the boss, thunderous sexual harassment is presented as a reality of the place in the same way as heat and dust. In summary: in these countries, this is how men live.
Alcohol is another constant. In this very sparsely populated corner of the world, everyone indeed seems to be alcoholic (distractions are non-existent). Kitty Green, who is herself Australian, modulates this observation in a skilful way, by anchoring the story to the point of view of these two heroines.
At the same time as them, we discover the Royal Hotel, its regulars and their specificities. As the beer coming out of the mine turns into drinking, the ambient good-naturedness gives way to something more unpredictable, more sinister…
Two types of reactions
Faced with this painful temporary reality, Hannah (Julia Garner, star of The Assistant) and Liv (Jessica Henwick, seen in Love and Monsters / Love and monsters) have polar opposite reactions: the first balks while the second rationalizes (“They are no worse than the bros on the boat”, “It’s just cultural”, etc.). Each has its reasons that the film suggests, here, with an allusion, or there, with a comment, without ever falling into over-explanation.
As in her brilliant first film, where the young assistant of a powerful Hollywood producer (à la Harvey Weinstein) is the traumatized witness of the sexual assaults perpetrated by her boss, Kitty Green confines most of the action to the non-working workplace. no longer about it, but about its protagonists. Increasingly anxiety-inducing workplace, as it becomes apparent that Hannah and Liv’s safety could be compromised at any time…
In this regard, the filmmaker proves adept at showing how the noose tightens around her two heroines. Even when a potential romance emerges for Hannah, her “no”s are followed by repeated insistence.
The possibility of a violent turn remains constant. It’s in every look that undresses young women, in every “joke” with a sexual connotation, in every insult supposedly intended as a compliment (“You’re an intelligent girl, you”), in every obstructive movement and inappropriate gesture: ordinary misogyny, and sometimes internalized, as evidenced by the only customer who shouts and belittles the waitresses.
A middle painting
The tension eases for a while, but tightens during the formidable – and trying – third act. In many ways, this portrait of the Australian outback is reminiscent of Ted Kotcheff’s cult 1971 film Wake in Wright (Or Outback), in which a teacher experiences a real alcoholic ordeal in the small town where he was only supposed to pass through.
In both feature films, we plunge into a bitter, raw nightmare, disturbing in its hyper-realism.
Released more than fifty years apart, the two films offer a similar depiction of the environment. It’s eloquent. And depressing. The difference is that Kitty Green refuses to be defeatist or fatalist, as evidenced by a final galvanizing plan.