Garner plays Hanna, an American backpacker who, along with her broke travelling companion Liv (Jessica Henwick), is forced to take a temporary job in a bar in an isolated mining community. The two pictures have another thing in common: both star the consistently superb Julia Garner. But both films capture the urgent micro-calculations and instinctive second-by-second risk assessments of being a woman in an environment where a single misstep could be ruinous. Tonally, the two films are poles apart: The Assistant’s blanched grey colour palette and buttoned-up terror in thrall to the unseen Weinstein-esque studio boss is a stark contrast to The Royal Hotel’s setting – the simmering, overheated and over-lubricated chaos of a flyblown bar in the Australian outback.
Australian director Kitty Green follows the skin-crawling psychological torture of 2019’s The Assistant with the brilliant, nerve-shredding The Royal Hotel, cementing her status as one of the very best in the game at showing a woman’s eye view of a male-dominated world.
