The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green, 2023) (Patreon)

Two travelers from Canada, Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) run out of money in Australia and go to a work-travel agency, where they secure temporary employment working at a bar in a mining town, a hundred miles from nowhere. Soon, they find themselves surrounded by dozens of horny macho men, all vying for their attention but not so subtly suggesting that they'll take the girls by force if they have to. Where Jane Campion's series Top of the Lake depicted Aussie misogyny as some kind of intricate plot than includes men all up and down the sociopolitical ladder, The Royal Hotel shows just how ordinary toxic masculinity really is.

And because of this painful normalcy, The Royal Hotel considers the degree to which women must accustom themselves to being treated like slabs of meat. Do they go along to get along, or get the fuck out? In a way, this film is the reverse image of Green's The Assistant. In that film, Garner's character was on the sidelines, gradually discovering the revolting truth about Weinstein and his ilk. In The Royal Hotel, aggressive sexism pretty much slaps Hanna and Liv upside the head.

When the young women's grizzled boss Billy (Hugo Weaving) calls Hanna a "smart cunt" within minutes of meeting her, the pair begin making excuses, just because that sort of behavior doesn't compute. Must be a cultural thing, they figure, and to some extent they're right. Green emphasizes the connection between male lifeways and the South Australian landscape, the common idea that lawlessness and violence have been baked right in to the continent ever since the Europeans arrived. The miners extract value from that landscape, and feel they are entitled to beer and pussy in return.  And even a relatively benign young man, Matty (Toby Wallace), expects physical compensation for showing the ladies the pockets of natural beauty hidden in the pockets of lower Oz. In short, it's just a sliding scale of prerogative.

Given this fraternal atmosphere, one thick enough to cut with a linoleum knife, The Royal Hotel places intense stress on relationships between women. Hanna, the so-called "sour cunt," is openly revolted by the come-ons and blithe vulgarity, while Liv eventually decides it's best to play along. Like a waitress who opts to flirt with customers to get better tips, Liv understands that her desirability is a commodity, one she can either squander or trade for material gain. But what would this capitulation look like if taken to its logical conclusion? The two Canadians arrive, replacing two British girls (Kate Cheel and Bree Bain) who dance drunk on the bar, flash their tits for the customers, and even have sex with them on occasion. In this context, this is what "good girls" look like.

The long-term prospects for women at the Royal Hotel don't look too promising either. Hanna and Liv's strongest ally in this scenario is Carol (Ursula Yovich), Billy's common-law wife. Middle-aged, stout, and Aboriginal, Carol appears to wield a fair amount of power over Billy, and by extension the Hotel. But this ability to affect outcomes is limited, given that it's understood as Billy keeping the wife happy, and not really seeing her as an equal. (Her racial difference is never remarked upon, but an uncomfortable encounter between a white patron and a Aboriginal trucker makes the hierarchy quite evident.) Carol knows the score, but she also makes it clear that she is never going to leave this place. 

The fact that Liv and Hanna's plight devolves into a genuine attack is predictable enough, I suppose, although it feels a bit like a sop to viewers who may have been annoyed with The Royal Hotel's generalized miasma of menace. Green is knowingly trading on the tropes of Ozploitation, and if we've learned anything from the cinematic Ponzi scheme known as elevated horror, mainstream audiences will get pissed if you don't give up the bang-bang-boom. The conclusion of The Royal Hotel is the kind of stupid gesture that puts a rise in the Levis of executive producers and studio heads. It would be more bothersome if Green had a masterpiece on her hands and flushed it in the final reel. But this is just a slightly above average psychological thriller, not much else.