Though only on her sophomore narrative film, Kitty Green is well on her way to establishing herself as one of the best modern filmmakers in touch with the methods of casual cultural misogyny and translating the harrowing experience of being a young woman against that backdrop. Her earlier film The Assistant was a searingly vivid indictment on not only the Hollywood industry’s complicity in covering up the Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, but its atmosphere of sexism and intimidation towards young women more broadly. Still one of the more powerful and bleakly honest movies made about that ecosystem. It’s no surprise that for her follow-up Green left that behind in favour of tackling similar issues back home -home for her being Australia.
Inspired by a documentary called Hotel Coolgardie, which detailed the harrowing experiences of intimidation and sexual harassment suffered by a pair of backpackers while working at an isolated pub near a mining town in the middle of the outback, The Royal Hotel hones in on the distastefulness of certain sequestered rural behavioural customs by presenting them opaquely from an outside perspective. Hanna (Julia Garner -previously star of The Assistant) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are ‘pretend-Canadian’ students on a summer adventure through Australia in need of some money. So they agree to tend bar at this run-down remote hotel for a few weeks.
And there’s a degree of depressing universality to the character of the folks they meet there, as anyone who’s been to a small rural town can attest. Indeed the question posed by the documentary on whether it says anything about Australia’s national character is somewhat quaint, given these same personalities and attitudes show up in just about any comparable culture, from the grizzled, demanding pub owner, to the rowdy local men ogling the new women with inappropriate comments, and the one creepy guy who gets a thrill out of intimidation. These are the folks Hanna and Liv must contend with with almost no respite, given they are lodged upstairs with nowhere to escape in off-work hours but the dried-out nearby swimming pool that everybody in the community knows about -especially those men.
It’s thrilling the way Green meticulously and organically transitions the films’ sense of discovery and almost quasi-quirkiness in the girls’ first experience with the hotel -meeting the drunken British girls whose job they’re taking over, caught humourously off-guard by landlord Billy (an unrecognizable Hugo Weaving) and his casual use of the c-word- to the distinct claustrophobia that comes with that dark and packed bar and the associated dangerous overtones presented by the locals’ casual harassment and crass sexual advances. It’s unlike any mood change in a horror movie, it’s subtle and revealing. There’s always a tremor of tension that threatens to boil over violently as Green quietly sets the stakes. That lack of safety for these young women in this environment is brazenly apparent, even in those more quiet nights tending bar with just a few patrons. All eyes are on them in that dingy place where they are sexualized purely by their context. Green really forces you to see the accepted condition of these men they interact with, or that one older woman thrown in with this lot, encouraging the girls to show more cleavage as they serve drinks. It’s a sign of just how embedded toxic local patriarchy can be; and how menacing such an atmosphere is even without the violent overtures.
A movie it reminds me a lot of is Firecrackers, a Canadian indie about young women endeavouring to escape their stifling small town –dangerous for similar reasons to do with ingrained misogyny and excused abuse. Green likely hasn’t seen that movie, but it speaks to the wider relevance of that experience that they can so closely mirror one another. This is a veritable wild west where indiscretions are not taken seriously (Billy admits to having several unenforced bans on the record), and where women are not taken seriously. Only Carol (Ursula Yovich), Billy’s wife, stands up for the girls at any point, demands Billy pay them the overdue wages they’ve earned.
Even in micro-aggressions like these, there’s a palpable anxiety to be felt, to say nothing of the deeply unsettling scare tactic one of the guys pulls against Hanna. His friend Matty (Toby Wallace) takes the girls out for a day trip at a swimming hole, and it is on this occasion especially that the only tether of comfort for the audience is the presence Hanna and Liv have of each other. In a movie where every man they run into is a creep (except for a cool Norwegian fling of Hanna’s, played to my delight by Herbert Nordrum of The Worst Person in the World), that relationship between Hanna and Liv is critical. And as Liv begins to drift more into a nonchalant attitude, chalking up the issues to “cultural difference”, the more it all is suffocating for Hanna.
Garner is remarkable at playing that visceral vulnerability, that cold fear barely concealed by the stoicism that gets her labelled a buzzkill (and of course she is told to smile on multiple occasions). She radiates with such devastation her discomfort onto the audience, their compass for the movie’s tensions overall. And Henwick is exceptional too in her lackadaisical attitude, a suitable compliment of style to Garner, to whom she is subtly pitted against as much as alongside. That friendship is the movie’s emotional core, much as it becomes less centralized over time as Hanna is put into situations without Liv by her side –in which Green re-emphasizes the necessity of their relationship to both their physical and mental health in this circumstance. The most harrowing scenes of the movie are simply those of when Liv leaves work early or is too intoxicated to really be there for Hanna when she needs her.
Late in the last act, Green translates exceptionally well the horror of being the person in charge at a public facing institution with no management around. She builds sharply little slivers of tension around a handful of obstinate, leering patrons, and the disturbing details that follow them around. It ultimately boils over in a blunt yet extravagant manner that is perhaps a touch beyond the movie’s equilibrium, but it is earned through sheer guttural satisfaction, which Green proves she can deliver for an ending as well as unremitting bleakness.
Another filmmaker, especially an Australian, might not be so critical of the behaviours expressed in this film. It is simply a facet of the culture, they might insist, and doesn’t mean anything more. Green clearly disputes this second point heavily, and her movie asks of the first why? Why is it that the c-word is so casual there? The Royal Hotel examines what is allowed by these small tremors of misogyny festering in isolated communities; a movie that glaringly encapsulates an atmosphere of everyday unsafety for young women. It is pointed and severe, palpably gripping as a narrative unto itself, yet socially revelatory in ways that can’t be ignored.
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