Another gift from South Australia, after the recent hit “Talk to Me,” “The Royal Hotel” is a cautionary trip to a dark and arid corner of mindless, toxic masculinity. Hanna (Julia Garner, “The Assistant”) ) and Liv (Jessica Henwick, “Glass Onion”) are two young women from Canada (or so they say), who have run out of friends and money aboard a cruise ship and decide to take jobs at a pub in a remote corner of Australia, where the clientele are sex-starved local miners. Cue the Hitchcock shot of the two women being dropped off in the middle of dusty nowhere by a bus.
When Liv and Hanna first arrive at the pub, they meet at-first-frosty cook and caretaker Carol (Ursula Yovich, “Australia”) and pub owner Billy (Hugo Weaving), who just happens to be a drunk and keeps pickled snakes in glass jars on shelves behind the bar. Hanna and Liv also run into their predecessors in rooms upstairs, Jules (Alex Malone) and Cassie (Kate Cheel), Englishwomen whose going-away party runs out of control.
After Billy gives them a two-minute lesson in serving and ringing up the sales on an ancient register, Liv and Hanna get the hang of the barely controlled chaos that is the pub on most nights. The customers get drunk, and the more drunk they get the more dangerous some of them become. Hanna and Liv have both their potential abusers and potential protectors in the rowdy crowd. But who is what? The sole woman in the crowd is an older person named Glenda (Barbara Lowing). But she is just as drunk and abusive as some of the men. Hanna and Liv were warned to expect “male attention.” But this is “The Road Warrior” for real in the wifi-and-police-free Aussie Outback.
Hanna is courted by the tall and good-looking young man named Matty (Toby Wallace). He takes her and Liv in one of the several vintage vehicles with big bush-wacker front bumpers to a place to swim, a hidden away waterfall and pool. It’s a peaceful oasis. But on one night a customer named Dolly (Daniel Henshall, “Okja”) drunk out of his mind, wanders up to the women’s rooms, looking for mischief. A terrified Hanna locks him out. The nearest town is a six-hour drive. Hanna finds a snake in her room. Dolly removes it, pickles it and leaves it in a jar on the bar for Hanna. Is it a gift or a warning?
Directed and co-written by Kitty Green, who wrote and directed the 2019 Garner vehicle “The Assistant,” “The Royal Hotel” once again stalks a dangerous realm inhabited in this case by both kangaroos and toxic men. The talismanic snakes behind the bar are only one sign of the rule of the males of the species. We also have the half-armored vehicles and big-banging fireworks.
But this is also the land where the C-word is a common synonym for “mate.” When asked why they traveled to Australia, Hanna tells her questioner it was “the furthest away.” What were she and Liv running away from? Suddenly, Torsten (Herbert Nordrum, “The Worst Person in the World”), a very tall cruise ship passenger interested in Hanna, arrives in a tiny red car. Everyone continues to drink too much. Liv is wilder than Hanna and often drinks herself to the point of oblivion. Is she repeating behavior that sent her on this mad voyage to the real-life land known as Oz? Garner and Henwick are completely believable as friends who have experienced life together. As the more sensible one, Garner exerts more self-control, and in one scene becomes fiercely protective. By the way, “The Royal Hotel” was “inspired by” the 2016 Australian documentary “Hotel Coolgardie.” Pour you another?
MPA rating: R (for profanity, substance abuse and nudity)
How to watch: in theaters Friday
