The Royal Hotel Review: A Microcosm of Misogyny
Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick in “The Royal Hotel”
On the opposite side of the world, as far from “here” as you can get, Hanna & Liv find themselves low on cash with unlimited time to spare on their sprawling Australian vacation. After consulting an employment agency, they’re directed to The Royal Hotel, which lands them even further off the map than they ever expected they’d be. It’s here, at the outback’s most remote bar, that director Kitty Green builds a terrifying microcosm of the misogyny (both small and large) that women face every day.
Following up her exceptional The Assistant, which attacked the system of abuse in the #MeToo Movement, The Royal Hotel is an even more nerve-wracking deconstruction of the harmful male gaze. Set in a mining town where 99% of the bar’s patrons consist of men coming off a hard day of work, Hanna and Liv are thrust into a pressure cooker of bad motivations. From the girls’ first shift, Green ratchets up the tension with each snide comment at the girls’ expense. You know that this is leading to something, but you don’t want to see where it goes.
Julia Garner as Hanna in “The Royal Hotel”
Reteaming with Green as Hanna is The Assistant star and Ozark breakout, Julia Garner. She’s clearly more skeptical of their situation than her traveling partner, the also exceptional Jessica Henwick as Liv. While Liv seems to let the comments slide as “harmless” or “part of the culture”, Hanna can feel their sinister undertone. Garner exudes mastery in her performance, able to convey complex thoughts on screen with only her eyes. You can feel her testing the waters with the men, hoping to find some redeeming qualities only to confront disappointment at every turn. The men are testing the women as well, with much less subtlety.
The cast of characters in The Royal Hotel expertly constructs a web defining different levels of trust between them all. There’s Hugo Weaving (Lord of the Rings, The Matrix) as the bar’s owner who walks the line as a respectable authority figure but slips back in with the rest of them when he drinks. He’s accompanied by the bar’s chef, played by the Australian actress Ursula Yovich, offering some hope as the only other female employee.
Then there’s the patrons. I was particularly impressed by Toby Wallace as Matty, who keeps you guessing as to his intentions, and Daniel Henshall as Dolly, clearly the most dangerous of the bunch.
At times The Royal Hotel steps into horror-movie-worthy territory as night falls over the bar and its customers dissipate for the evening. No spooks or specters are needed to instill fear here. All Green needs is an inebriated man wandering the halls to make your hairs stand on end. Narratively, as a tension-building thriller, The Royal Hotel displays one of the strongest screenplays I’ve seen all year. All of this tension builds to an explosive climax that drew audible reactions out of the audience I saw this with at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles.
After the film was over, and I was on my way to the car, I noticed I was the only one in a dark alley. Now I’m not one who gets startled easily, but an uncomfortable feeling came over me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. I started to walk a little faster than normal, darting my eyes around, but I likely had nothing to feel nervous about. For any woman in the same situation as me, I can’t say the same. Green was able to bottle up that fear on screen, and if it can leave an impact on me enough to where I could feel it walking alone at night, we certainly have an exciting new voice in cinema that I can’t wait to see more of.
#458 on my Favorites List as of this review
#4 out of 56 on my Best of the Year List as of this review
