The Royal Hotel Review: Kitty Green Delivers A Nerve-Shredding Thriller [TIFF 2023]
After running out of money on their holiday to Australia, Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) look for work to keep things alive. There's not much available, but then they spot something. "Physically, it's not a demanding job. The only thing that can be a little bothersome is the remoteness of the location," the traveling holiday agent tells them, before adding: "You're gonna have to be comfortable with a little male attention." Judging by their reactions, neither of them is particularly thrilled about the idea, but with no cash left, what choice do they have?
Hanna and Liv are driven to a highly remote dive bar called The Royal Hotel run by Billy (an excellent Hugo Weaving), an alcoholic with a short fuse, and Carol (Ursula Yovich), his long-suffering partner trying to hold things together. The red flags pile up almost immediately — their employers have no interest in their travel documents, their living quarters are shabby (to put it kindly), and The Royal Hotel's sign is so neglected that the name feels like a cruel joke. Their job is to bartend, which seems simple enough. But behind the bar, Hanna and Liv feel almost like prey trapped to be ogled by some of the nastiest men you'll ever come across. At first, the men's various pleas and jokes are uncomfortable yet delivered with a wink and a smile, but they become far more monstrous as time goes on.
Kitty Green's "The Royal Hotel" offers a familiar dichotomy in Hanna and Liv's relationship. While Liv enjoys the raucous energy of The Royal Hotel and has adapted well to the often riotous energy of the bar, Hanna is far less trusting and unable to let her guard down — and with the creep level at a delirious high in "The Royal Hotel," she's right to do so. Hanna's hardened edge frustrates the bar dwellers (and Billy), all of whom push her to smile — but with each obnoxious request, Hanna becomes less and less interested in acquiescing.
This relationship is at the center of "The Royal Hotel," and while it's often effective, it sometimes feels too one-note. The film is so dedicated to atmosphere and mood — it's practically impossible to not be on edge during the entire 91-minute runtime — that it can forego character development. We don't learn much about Hanna or Liv by design, and while the film's repetitive nature is great for building tension, it struggles to really let us into these characters' lives beyond the surface. We spend almost every moment with Hanna, and it helps that Garner is a brilliant talent, channeling fear while also maintaining her strength in increasingly difficult situations. Henwick is impressive too, but the script casts Liv off as more of the silly, unaware character, not giving her much to do except conflict with Hanna's innate desire to protect her friend.
A powerful statement on masculinity
Of all the regulars at the bar, Hanna forms an unlikely friendship with Matty (Toby Wallace), whose kind smile seems to differentiate him from the others. Matty takes Liv and Hanna to a place where they can swim (not easy to find in the Australian winter), and it provides one of the few tender moments in the film as the trio grooves to Kylie Mingoue's "The Loco-Motion." Green is so good at exploring vulnerability and softness, mixing that with steadily escalating tension to a nauseating degree, creating a breathless experience by merging these two very different worlds together.
Green's two narrative features appear very different on the surface, particularly in pacing and tone, but both are remarkably similar, yet distinct. Green's previous feature "The Assistant" follows an assistant (also Garner) to a mogul in the entertainment industry. It's a much slower, more methodical film, but it also deals with how women feel in the presence of powerful men, and how those men exploit situations to their benefit as their positions of power and strength allow them to feel as if they can do anything. "The Royal Hotel" deals with the same themes, amping them up to the extreme — perhaps if Alex Garland hadn't called his horror film "Men" last year, Green would have used that title for "The Royal Hotel."
As the horrors of "The Royal Hotel" unfold, the film shifts from a terse thriller into a full-on horror, assisted by appropriately and effectively eerie cinematography from Michael Latham. The last 15 minutes are practically unbearable, heart-pounding scenes, anchored by Garner's work as Hanna, who can no longer bear these increasingly violent men and has had more than enough as she does whatever she can to protect not only herself but her best friend. As tense as they are, there's something lacking in these final minutes, not pushing things quite as far as you may expect. But by the time the film's final shot comes around, complete with an excellent one-line rallying cry, it's hard not to root for "The Royal Hotel."
/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10