Of all of the films in recent years that have touched on, either explicitly or implicitly, the concerns of the #MeToo movement, arguably the most effective to date has been The Assistant, Kitty Green’s powerful 2019 narrative feature debut about a lowly assistant (Julia Garner) to a powerful, never-seen New York-based film mogul who increasingly aware of both the evident depravations of her boss and the vast indifference of her co-workers and higher-ups, all of whom seem willing to look the other way so as not to upset the apple cart. In Green’s eagerly awaited follow-up, The Royal Hotel, she tells a story that couldn’t be further removed from The Assistant in terms of geography or class status but which deals with similar concerns regarding sexual misconduct and the plight of those who can no longer simply pretend that the cruel and abusive treat that they either experience or bear witness can merely be written off as a bit of fun.
Taking inspiration from the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, the film opens with two American tourists, Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), whose good time aboard a party yacht outside of Sydney comes to an abrupt end when they realize that they are out of money. Desperate to find a way to earn money and stay in the country, they wind up enrolling in a work-tourism exchange program that assigns them to work and live at the titular bar hotel, located in an especially remote and forbidding part of the Outback and run by Billy (Hugo Weaving) and his Aboriginal girlfriend (and hotel cook) Carol (Ursula Yovich). The place looks like a living nightmare—virtually every surface area seems to lightly coated in some kind of fluid or another—and while Hanna is immediately wary of the place, Liv looks at it as just another adventure.
When making the offer to work there, the exchange program rep tells them that may have to get used to some undue attention from the clientele, almost entirely male workers from a nearby mine, and this proves to be the understatement of the year as they become the target of leering glances, bawdy comments and outright harassment from the customers—even the sole female regular (Barbara Lowing) throws sexist invective their way, presumably to show that she is one of the guys. A couple of the regulars seem a little better than the others when away from the crowd—Matty (Toby Wallace) sets his sights on Hanna while the seemingly fearsome Teeth (James Frecheville) politely asks Liv for a date and gets mocked by the others for acting like a human being. On the other hand, all-too-regular customer Dolly (Daniel Henshall) spends all of his time acting in a quietly menacing manner towards the two in ways that suggest that the film could turn into Wolf Creek in a flash. The two try to make the most of their bizarre circumstances but at a certain point, not even the more open-minded Liv can continue to ignore the increasingly unhinged aggressiveness that she and Hanna have become the focus for based only on the fact that they are young and pretty (or “fresh meat,” as one wag scribbles on the wall outside as a warped signal to others.)
The Royal Hotel is not a thriller, per se, but in its exploration of a form of misogyny that is so thoroughly baked in that it is no longer recognized by anyone outside of complete outsiders (it takes about seven seconds after their initial meeting for Billy to offhandedly refer to Hanna as a “smart cunt” and he is one of the less hostile guys on display here), Green and co-writer Oscar Redding use a slow burn approach to quietly ratchet up the tension to a point where even the most benign scenes feel as if they could go horribly wrong in an instant, a sensation that any woman who has been even remotely in the shoes of Hanna or Liv will recognize all too well. The film largely manages to eschew the broad strokes in regards to the treatment that they endure, preferring to depict different forms of harassment that range from the relatively benign to the kind that requires brandishing an axe for protection—none of which they have done anything to deserve and all of which proves to be ultimately exhausting. Green orchestrates all of this in a milieu of constant quiet menace that she manages to keep going for virtually the entire film, aided in great part by the standout performances from Garner and Henwick, who perfectly embody the spirit of a seemingly solid friendship that becomes unsteady when one is forced to become the apparent fuddy-duddy—the kind who is constantly being told to smile more—and the one more willing to go with the flow, no matter where it might lead her.
For most of its running time, The Royal Hotel is just as gripping and provocative in its examination of a young woman forced into discomforting positions due to sexism and economic insecurity as The Assistant proved to be. However, while the tensions certainly build to a breaking point during the final scenes, the writing slackens somewhat in certain areas—having established a definitive schism in the relationship between Hanna and Liv, the screenplay doesn’t really deal with this particular aspect and the conclusion, while undeniably crowd-pleasing, feels like it was a last-minute replacement for one that dealt in harder and more difficult truths. Still, as an examination of discomfiting gender issues within the framework of familiar genre tropes, The Royal Hotel is a mostly potent work that should startle and shame viewers in equal measure.