In my years of traveling to other places, I’ve had such a blast traveling alone, making new friends, getting lost in a new place over a crazy night. I would mention this to all my female friends, and they would always say back, “Well, it’s not the same, you know what I mean?” Kitty Green, Julia Garner, and Jessica Henwick very effectively show me what my friends all meant with their stay at The Royal Hotel. I’ll adjust my travel recommendations accordingly, sorry ladies.
While post college backpacking through Australia, Liv (Henwick) has run out of money while living it up. Desperate to keep the dream going, she begs her bff Hanna (Garner) to stop making out with the cute Norwegian boy on their cruise, and take up short term jobs to keep the dream going. The only jobs available send Liv and Hanna to an Outback mining town, where The Royal Hotel Bar run by Billy (Hugo Weaving) and Carol (Ursula Yovich) needs two new bartenders to serve the plethora of men working in the Australian mines.
For those who either insist the patriarchy is over or that we need to time travel back to traditional gender roles, I can’t stress that you need to watch Kitty Green’s films, where she puts women into heavily male dominated societies. Her slow burn of dread is excellent in The Royal Hotel. At first, the miners are your standard frat boy irritating, repeatedly saying “c*nt” or asking for Dixen Cider…repeatedly, stuff both Liv and Hanna have dealt with before. Then there’s the sort of nice miners like Matty (Toby Wallace) or Teeth (James Frecheville), happy to accommodate the girls requests and not feel insulted. But even during these happier times, it’s clear at least to Hanna that this society is different from your standard patriarchy. Here, the no’s aren’t really no’s: they’re “try harders” to the men, and boundaries get pushed, little by little, with Billy and the others saying “come on, lighten up, it’s only a bit of fun.” And when no means yes, that only encourages all these men, especially Dolly (Daniel Henshall) to pursue until they get what they want: sex with one of the two new hot young women. Hanna can see this, while Liv has beer goggles on, something the men also exploit to try to separate the “weaker” ones from the “smart c*nt.” Each little boundary crossed makes the girls’ predicament a little more scary, expecting the worst to happen. Only a woman could really extract so much fear out of a situation so seemingly benign, but as Kitty Green points out here, when the men heavily outnumber the women, no situation is benign.
And Green couldn’t have found a better muse than Julia Garner. While Jessica Henwick basically gets to drink all night and work on her drunk acting, it’s Garner’s Hanna that goes through a pretty complex personal transformation. Garner takes what appears to be a naive, innocent young woman and grows her up emotionally very quickly, standing up to the scary situations and putting her security on the line many times to save her friend’s character misreadings from turning into something dark and awful. There’s a last call standoff that’s electric to watch because of how Garner effectively conveys fear and emotional brilliance simultaneously, to diffuse what could have become something violent. There’s a reason Garner’s an Emmy winner, and in The Royal Hotel we see further range of capability the talented actress has in her arsenal.
To my friends, I cannot stress this enough: after The Royal Hotel, I know what you mean. I cringe at how many times you might have been trapped in situations like this one: surrounded by men, guard up, always looking for the way out. I wish things could be better for you, and I’ll start here: if Hugo Weaving’s a boss of some kind, get out of there ASAP. Dude’s only there to make things worse for everyone.