It may be dusty and dirty, but it has a humanity depicted in all its meanness and hunger in The Royal Hotel. The Aussie indie takes us to a remote desert mining town where two American 20-something tourists, Hannah (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), should not go to seek adventure and some cash to support it. Liv expresses their cluelessness: “Will there be kangaroos?”
The Outback gets new meaning in the setting. Little thrives except the titular hotel, whose ironic title conveys the squalor its miners live in every day. They are a choleric and feisty crew waiting to be amused by the two young women who arrive to be barmaids.
Although most of the time violence is waiting in the wings, the film cautiously keeps the girls from bolting by the fact that they are not being violated physically if not psychologically. The fact that we know little about the ladies’ backgrounds saves us from despair over their dicey life and encourages our guesses about their destiny.
The rude and brash epithets thrown at the girls would have sent them home immediately except that they need the money to live and be true to their pact to abandon all and backpack themselves into excitement. Do not judge their decision, for their desperate need compromises their better judgement, two ladies who show intelligence and pluck that in other circumstances would lead them to the executive suite in decidedly un-dusty NYC. In ways, they are an accurate depiction of us in our foolish but hopeful youths.
Writer director Kitty Green, inspired by the documentary Hotel Coolgardie, effectively moves them from one sexist setup to another, they learning to defend themselves and hope for freedom from male dominance. It is not until the last chapter that we can see ahead to their liberation with a nod to the romantic freeze- frame ending of Thelma & Louise.
The ending would have been better not to happen to reinforce the desperate and dangerous situations we sometimes willingly thrust ourselves with no romantic way out in sight. A royal predicament for two dynamic adventurers.
The Royal Hotel
Director: Kitty Green (The Assistant)
Screenplay: Green, Oscar Redding
Cast: Julia Garner (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Jessica Henwick (St. Trinians 2)
Run Time: 1h 31m
Rating: NR
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
