I didn’t hop on the hype train for The Assistant when I saw it in 2020. While I pegged director Kitty Green as someone with talent, the story of a movie-industry PA and harassment victim in New York was too oblique for my taste. I’m glad to report that Green’s second feature The Royal Hotel goes for less indirection, as the director returns to her native Australia. As female revenge movies go, I find The Royal Hotel to be not as well-plotted as Promising Young Woman or as Fair Play, which dropped on Netflix last week. Even so, it comes to a satisfying conclusion.
Based on a documentary film by Pete Gleeson, which I must admit I haven’t seen, the movie starts in a party boat on Sydney Harbour, where Canadian students Hanna and Liv (Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) are spending their summer vacation wintering Down Under. Suddenly short of cash, they take jobs tending bar at The Royal Hotel, a terribly misnamed hole in the middle of the outback that caters mostly to miners. They more or less expect the sexist banter — Liv’s first customer asks for a “Dicken Cider” — as the only women under 30 for miles around, but it soon spirals out of control.
Garner starred in The Assistant, and I’m glad to report that Green has cast her as less of a shrinking violet this time. Hanna is the one trying to set boundaries for the men, while Liv is the one insisting that the male misbehavior is harmless and that they don’t understand the culture. This dynamic is well captured by the lead actresses, and when a very drunk Liv calls Hanna an embarrassment for trying to stand up for her, it’s a stark reminder that defending a woman will not always result in thanks. Green has a firm handle on how incel culture and drinking culture reinforce each other in this place. No one is riding to the girls’ rescue, not the customer who sets himself up as the nice guy (Toby Wallace), not the Royal’s owner (Hugo Weaving), not the Norwegian tourist (Herbert Nordrum) whom they meet in Sydney and then unexpectedly shows up in the outback.
The film moves quite slowly in its first half, as befits a setting where nothing much happens, but the way the violence escalates is skillfully managed as Hanna and Liv find themselves under siege inside the hotel. They’re saved principally by the fact that the men are willing to turn on one another. The Royal Hotel ends with an act of revenge that feels appropriate as the girls walk down the road, ready to go back to the Great White North.
The Royal Hotel
Starring Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick. Directed by Kitty Green. Written by Kitty Green and Oscar Redding. Rated R.
