'The Royal Hotel' Review: A Tense Travel Thriller [TIFF 23]
Director Kitty green’s sophomore film solidifies her place as one of the next great voices in the thriller genre
A great thriller film can find tension in all the most unexpected places, and with her sophomore feature, The Royal Hotel, director Kitty Green has firmly established herself as one of the new players in the genre. The film follows 2 best friends, Hanna, (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), two Canadian backpackers, looking to live life and explore the world together. The film’s opening scene sees the duo partying away at a rave in Sydney, before Liv realizes that their credit cards are being declined.
In need of work, and wanting to get back to their partying ways, the two find a job as bartenders out in a very rural mining town, hundreds of miles away from any sort of familiar architecture or life as they know it, in general. They arrive as strangers in a strange land, unaccustomed to the locale, slang, sense of humour, and general atmosphere. Kitty Greene particularly nails the atmospheric importance in every scene of this film, with the environment feeling tangible, lived-in, and at times, both inviting and frightening.
As Hanna and Liv serve their term as bartenders, they experience the locale, night after night. Owner Billy (Hugo Weaving) makes an attempt at helping the two get better accustomed to the nightly routine of dealing with the drunken men, but often becoming one of them himself. As each night progresses, the tension grows, with Hanna being the more apprehensive one, and Liv mildly indulging in the grandeur.
Eventually, the lines become blurred, with the two becoming more and more entangled in the lives of the local men, with the tension growing in tandem. Both Garner and Henwick expertly play the many elements of the film to a tee, giving a great sense of agency and urgency to these two young women in a uniquely complicated situation. Kitty Green’s sharp screenplay feels lived-in, effortlessly authentic, and all of this is accentuated by her precision in directing. Expertly paced, the film allows every moment to breathe as it needs to, and then can take all the life out of a scene by infusing the chaos and tension ever-so seamlessly.
Much like her first film, The Assistant, Green is able to find razor-sharp tension in the most unexpected of places., by infusing a modern, culturally relevant social issue at the core of the story. In the case of The Royal Hotel, the tension is often gendered, and in any lesser film, the two protagonists would likely feel more helpless to an audience. Green does a great job of giving these young women ownership and agency in their own story, while also making the tension and threats in the narrative feeling important and synchronous.
If her first two films were any indicators, Kitty Green will definitely be a voice to keep following within the thriller genre, fusing modern tensions and issues with the cinematic language of a thriller to provide a uniquely captivating viewing experience.