Monday 5 February 2024

The Royal Hotel (2023)

One of Kitty Green’s pro-female films (The Assistant, Ukraine is Not a Brothel) in which Osark’s Ruth (Julia Garner - also in The Assistant) goes backpacking with her friend in Australia only to run out of money so needing to get a job.

They do so in a bar in an aggressively male-orientated outback town where the pair of them witness, and are subjected to, lots of male attention and bad behaviour, usually via booze.

It’s really slow and boring as Green drags the audience along in order to make her point. The Assistant was similarly slow, but had something much more engaging about it.

Garner and Jessica Henwick do what they can with what they have, but it’s not enough. It is clear even from this though, what a good actress Julia Garner is becoming. But this is just dour, hollow, too long and drab.

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