Hotel Hell

The Royal Hotel opens with a scene whose vibe will be familiar, I think, for most women. In the multicolor haze and thumping bass of a nightclub, two early-twentysomethings (Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) are dancing with abandon until a big, oafy guy wanders up to one of them and says something in her ear. She can’t understand him, so she has to get closer. What’s his deal? Should our hackles be up? Should theirs?

THE ROYAL HOTEL ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Kitty Green
Written by: Kitty Green, Oscar Redding
Starring: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Hugo Weaving
Running time: 91 mins

Turns out (not really a spoiler), he’s just an affable Swedish tourist, and they’re all in a midday, below-deck rave on a cruise ship pulling into the Sydney harbor. But this is the kind of scenario we all know can go different ways, and some of those ways involve that dude turning out to be a million varieties of unpleasant. It’s an early tip from director Kitty Green (The Assistant) that she’s working in the vast gray haze that chokes the air for young women everywhere always, a world in which one must be constantly calibrating how to respond to male interest and how to determine whether it’s wanted, unwanted or truly dangerous.

Green takes this all-too-real reality and mashes it up with a popular horror trope, including in many a recent indie: the one in which the eager young women go on an adventure into ominous deep country. In this case, it’s a dusty Australian middle-of-nowhere town full of coal miners. You can practically hear the chainsaws firing up in the background.

Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Henwick) sign on with an Australian travel-work program, taking jobs at a pub out here to make more money to resume their midday-raving lifestyle on the backpacker circuit. The versatile Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith! Priscilla, Queen of the Desert!) plays the sozzled, grizzly owner of the Royal Hotel, a shitty dive bar that seems to be the only game in this outback community.

His Aboriginal partner Carol (Ursula Yovich) runs the kitchen and the staff and seems to be the lone capable presence. Her complete lack of reaction to the arrival of the new girls (the old ones, a pair of Brits, are stumbling out of town with killer hangovers) suggests she knows how this goes because it’s been déjà vu here for a very long time. Her interactions with the patrons also made me think she’s been hearing casual racial slurs in that place for forever (I’d very much watch a Carol prequel).

The film’s inspired by a 2016 documentary, Hotel Coolgardie, and the Royal Hotel patrons shuffle in with what seem to be long, world-weary backstories. The most disturbing of these blokes is Dolly (Daniel Henshall), whose babyfaced, sharklike grin at the end of the bar has Liv squicked out on her very first day. But then, the regulars are a rainbow of variations on dubious men. Frontrunners for Liv and Hanna’s attention are Matty, the cutie with a big grin, whose first order from Liv is a “cider… a Dickin’s cider.” And there’s Teeth (James Frecheville), a quirky, quieter type who seems a bit off.

Perhaps you’re thinking: Maybe you’re just bringing your own bias to a portrayal of a particular slice of life in a particular part of the world. But nah. The girls are thrown into tending bar immediately, and the scene that amps up on their first night has that sound you’ll recognize from so many other movies, set in similar places, all over the world. It’s the dull hum of a roomful of mostly men, getting drunker, then getting louder, and getting more ham-handedly flirtatious with the women present. It threatens to turn suddenly into something really ugly. The Accused, anyone? Thelma and Louise?

Green doesn’t go there. As in her last film, she seems much more interested in exploring the more mundane, and thus maybe more insidious, toxic energy women endure on a daily basis. Liv deals by reframing it all as just more adventure, going around to the other side of the bar and drinking with the guys. Hanna can’t make herself fake smile to the endless volley of sexist banter, earning her the nickname “Sour Cunt.”

The Royal Hotel does build some momentum as its incidents turn increasingly menacing, and eventually Hanna will pick up the axe Carol’s been using to split logs. The film’s dramatic finale might seem oddly bombastic compared to its preceding events, and it muted voice. But perhaps it’s the film’s response to that tedious old saw, oft-heard by the girls in the Royal Hotel: Whaddya getting so upset for? It’s not a big deal.

There isn’t much story to it, and that’s OK. This slip of a movie works best as a tone poem about the constant maneuvering young women do through the waters of toxic masculinity, a Superfund site that seems unlikely to ever be un-polluted.