Toronto International Film Festival 2023: THE ROYAL HOTEL

Kitty Green’s latest film The Royal Hotel follows Liv (Jessica Henwick) and Hanna (Julia Garner), two friends backpacking across Australia. They decide to take a job at the titular hotel when they run out of money.

The film is in conversation with the 1971 Australian thriller Wake in Fright. Both films follow characters who find themselves in small Australian mining towns after they have run into economic troubles. As a modern twist on this classic, The Royal Hotel sometimes works. 

Slow Building Tension

Like Kitty Green’s first feature The Assistant (also starring Julia Garner), The Royal Hotel also explores gender power dynamics, now focusing on the dusty Australian outback. Green creates a constantly increasing sense of tension, in even the most mundane of scenes.

But the film builds and builds tension while feeling unresolved. There are moments where tension is built especially well, but so many plot threads are brought up and quickly forgotten, the only goal to create tension in the moment. 

The film builds tension especially well in a scene set throughout the kitchen, utilizing the space well to wrench up the tension with each new turn. But this tension still feels unresolved. And we are left expecting more. 

Cultural Differences and Gender Power Dynamics

While it is important to discuss the never-ending violence against women–and how women backpackers are often victims of this violence, there is also an underlying feeling that the film wants us to view different countries, especially small towns, as dangerous – but The Royal Hotel comes from an Australian writer and director. Even though this feeling came across while watching The Royal Hotel, it does seem an appropriate exploration of Australian cinema’s history and its future.  Wake in Fright which also explored similar ideas about Australian mining towns and the dangerous people who inhabit them and you can feel how Green was inspired by this film and an era of Australian cinema when creating The Royal Hotel.  

The film makes every man dangerous to some degree, which works to show how much women go through every day, even in situations where they should feel safe. But this painting of every character outside Liv and Hanna as dangerous points to an idea that people different from us, with different cultural identities, are to be avoided.

The Royal Hotel also creates realistic tension with its characterization of the men Liv and Hanna meet, especially Matty (Toby Wallace) and Teeth (James Frecheville). Both Frecheville and Wallace play their characters with a charm and hint of danger under the surface. By introducing these characters and building their dynamics with Liv and Hanna, the film’s exploration of power dynamics hits even harder when the men reveal more of their true natures.

The Royal Hotel shows the complex power dynamics between men and women, but this becomes clouded with an anti-travel feeling that even if unintentional feels tied more toward unfamiliar cultures than it does the inherent violence women face traveling alone.  This idea of culture explored in The Royal Hotel also brings up questions like “Does an idea that something is part of a specific culture make it okay?”, such as the use of harsh sexist language, which Kitty Green explores in The Royal Hotel. 

Underdeveloped Characters but Strong Performances

While Hanna feels like a complete, nuanced character, The Royal Hotel does not spend enough time allowing us to get to know its characters. The film frequently brings up something that happened in the past, but all we ever hear is that Liv wanted to get as far away as possible from home.

The Royal Hotel spends time establishing backstory, but everything is left hanging in the air. This could be a way to allow the audience to see themselves in the story, but it’s more effective to share a specific, unique story where we can still relate, rather than creating a shell we are supposed to fit ourselves within. 

But The Royal Hotel does not spend much time exploring any of its other characters’ personalities and inner-lives. Even Hanna’s best friend Liv pales in comparison to the development Hanna undergoes. The film also pits Hanna and Liv against each other, with Hanna feeling like she’s a better person because she doesn’t drink, doesn’t quite work.

The opening scene suggests Liv’s drinking caused her and Hanna to run out of money, but this idea that drinking instantly makes any character a worse person comes across a little too thick and pointed. During too much of the film, Liv is shown being debilitatingly drunk. Jessica Henwick plays these scenes well, but she should have been given more to do with her character. More aspects to explore, allowing a complex nuance between her and Hanna to emerge instead of focusing almost entirely on her drinking. 

One of the few characters Liv and Hanna meet that stands out is Billy (Hugo Weaving), the owner of the pub now employing the backpacking best friends. Billy is an interesting character, and the times where he becomes more volatile and dangerous are more intense and engaging, since we see him at his highest and lowest as an alcoholic who goes from prickly and rough but with an unexpected charm to someone violent and menacing the more he drinks. Weaving’s performance captures the nuance of his character well and rings true to the reality of many alcoholics. 

Visually, the film highlights the rustic, dusty beauty of Australia–and even has a few moments where Liv and Hanna explore the area, finding spots where they feel comfortable and at peace. Yes, the dark tense moments hit even harder after we see the two bond with the townspeople before these men let their dangerous and controlling sides come into the light. 

The Royal Hotel explores how the safety of travel gets ripped away. This could be seen as a distracting tonal shift, but the way the road trip genre fades away and is replaced by a tense thriller matches what Kitty Green is trying to say about the dangerous reality women experience traveling. 

Conclusion

The Royal Hotel is at times a tense and engaging thriller with poignant performances (especially from Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, and Hugo Weaving), but sometimes its message feels muddled and the wrenched-up tension goes unresolved and unexplored. 

Watch The Royal Hotel