The Roy­al Hotel review – har­row­ing, but doesn’t bur­row under the skin

Every bar­tender knows that the hard­est part of the job is con­trol­ling the room. But The Roy­al Hotel, the Aus­tralian Out­back out­post in the new film by Kit­ty Green would prove a test for far more sea­soned ser­vice work­ers than Han­na (Jes­si­ca Gar­ner) and Liv (Jes­si­ca Hen­wick), two back­pack­ers just try­ing to be good sports even as the orders pile up and the men edge ever clos­er into their per­son­al space. That’s because it’s full of beard­ed min­ers all in iden­ti­cal miner’s over­alls – like a uni­form of rugged mas­culin­i­ty – shot­gun­ning beers, egging on the learn­ing-dis­abled boy to set off fire­crack­ers in the cor­ner, order­ing ​“Dick­ins Cider” (say it out loud).

Han­na and Liv are trav­el­ing in Syd­ney, enjoy­ing par­ty-boat raves and buzzed hookups with ran­dom strangers, until they run out of mon­ey and take a tem­po­rary place­ment at the Roy­al Hotel, a broke­down palace out where cell­phone recep­tion doesn’t reach and the bus only comes through maybe once or twice a week. Like in Green’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, the office-set The Assis­tant, The Roy­al Hotel film takes place large­ly in a sin­gle loca­tion that’s a world unto itself. (The pro­duc­tion design­er on The Assis­tant was Fletch­er Chancey; on The Roy­al Hotel it is Leah Popple.)

Shot in widescreen befit­ting the salty sun-baked expans­es, the venue is as epi­cal­ly scaled as a West­ern saloon, with a long bar, floor­boards scuffed just so, and shelves full of dusty old bot­tles and glass jars con­tain­ing pre­served snakes. In both films, Green has built what a themed twit­ter account might call ​“Work­places with Vague­ly Threat­en­ing Auras.”

The low hum of a pho­to­copi­er and HVAC sys­tem cloaked The Assis­tant in an ambi­ent banal­i­ty, fit­ting for a movie about a Har­vey Wein­stein – like film pro­duc­er-preda­tor and the cor­po­rate hier­ar­chy built up to enable and pro­tect him. The Roy­al Hotel has the slam of a dish­wash­er, the bang of a cool­er door that won’t stay shut — short, sharp shocks to match the sud­den surges of testos­terone that throw Han­na and Liv off their equilibrium.

Two fea­tures into her career as a fic­tion film­mak­er, it’s safe to call Green a mas­ter of the microag­gres­sion. She cal­i­brates moments of ambi­gu­i­ty and omi­nous­ness, and maps out the sub­tle ways in which young women are recruit­ed over to the far side of their own bound­aries. From their first meet­ing with the Roy­al Hotel’s land­lord — a bear­ish and weath­er-beat­en Hugo Weav­ing — Han­na and Liv are too cowed by his short tem­per, too uncer­tain in their new sur­round­ings, to call him out for the gra­tu­itous edge of con­tempt in the orders he barks out between swigs of piss-warm lager.

The bar’s reg­u­lars are right out of Wake in Fright, shout­ing for beers, roar­ing for the girls to get their tits out, yelling as they bang on the doors for the girls to let them in — but only so they can have a drink, aye? A soft-fea­tured local boy (Toby Wal­lace) who flirts with Han­na by singing along to Kylie Minogue as he dri­ves her out to a swm­ming hole push­es up against the edge of con­sent when he push­es her into the water before she’s ready.

Even Hanna’s Scan­di­na­vian hookup from ear­li­er in the trip (Her­bert Nor­drum, the sweet bro of The Worst Per­son in the World, going uproar­i­ous­ly broad in his sec­ond lan­guage) gets caught up the atmos­phere of com­pet­i­tive mate­ship and casu­al slurs. (Though real­ly, if you’re a cos­mopoli­tan knowl­edge work­er who shows up in a place like that in a pur­ple shirt like his, you’re as like­ly to get men­aced by the locals as you are to get drinks with them; Green may have picked the wrong sto­ry beat here.)

The Assis­tant was focalised entire­ly through Garner’s tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, whose var­i­ous flick­ers, through­out the film, of naïveté, obei­sance, agency, self-doubt, moral sense and com­plic­i­ty embody the com­plex­i­ty of indi­vid­ual respons­es with­in an abu­sive con­text, and make it dif­fi­cult to act with clar­i­ty and deci­sive­ness. But with The Roy­al Hotel Green and her fel­low screen­writer Oscar Red­ding make the more schemat­ic deci­sion to con­trast their joint pro­tag­o­nists’ atti­tudes. Henwick’s Liv is the cool girl, slam­ming shots and let­ting her guard down even around creeps — they’re fine, they’re harm­less, they’re nice guys, just get along — while Garner’s Han­na is guard-up and pro­tec­tive, with an eye for patri­ar­chal sub­texts and a nose for dan­ger, who can’t take a dirty joke or say ​“the c‑word” out loud.

After the self-con­tained and sim­mer­ing Assis­tant this feels like Green’s attempt to make sim­i­lar mate­r­i­al more acces­si­ble. There are hints of explana­to­ry back­sto­ry (includ­ing from a drunk char­ac­ter lit­er­al­ly vom­its out expo­si­tion), and one char­ac­ter, a lurk­ing creep, who’s pho­tographed like a hor­ror-movie vil­lain at uncan­ny posi­tions with the frame. All these ele­ments dri­ve a third-act esca­la­tion toward a major-key end­ing that is not just overt­ly vio­lent but out­right cathar­tic — the for­mer is fair enough, the lat­ter a dimin­ish­ment of Green’s more insid­i­ous talents.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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