Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 3 October

Hotel Coolgardie (Gleeson, 2017) is streaming on DocPlay

As part of my research for anoth­er pro­ject, last night we watched this des­per­ately tense fly-on-the-wall doc­u­ment­ary from Australia.

Hotel Coolgardie fol­lows two young Finnish back­pack­ers as they head to a small Western Australian town to work the bar at the loc­al pub. Lina and Stefanie are more des­per­ate for work than most as they have arrived in Australia after their cred­it cards have been stolen in Bali.

However, they are optim­ist­ic that a three-month gig miles from (almost) any­where will allow them to rebuild their fin­ances, buy a cheap car and hit the road to enjoy all that Australia has to offer.

It does not go accord­ing to plan.

Inexperienced at Australian-style bar work and unable to join in the off-colour banter that their Welsh pre­de­cessors kept up with, Lina and Stefanie soon find that their situ­ation becomes uncom­fort­able to say the least.

While the loc­als might think that their beha­viour towards the girls is inno­cent teas­ing it comes across – and frankly is – hos­tile and threatening.

Hotel Coolgardie is a sear­ing por­trait of an ugly aspect of Australia but I was inter­ested in the wider social and eco­nom­ic ques­tions that it raised.

We keep hear­ing about how much money the Western Australian min­er­al boom has made – there is a huge open cast gold mine just a few minutes drive from the pub – but little of that money seems to be stick­ing to the ribs of the locals.

They get to watch as heavily-laden big rigs sail through the town day and night on the road between Kalgoorlie and Perth, rarely stop­ping or leav­ing any money behind. Or if they do, none of it seems to be spent on amen­it­ies for the town.

So, drink­ing becomes the be-all and end-all for many of the res­id­ents and – let’s be hon­est – it does not bring out the best in them.

Hotel Coolgardie plays like it could be the open­ing act of an Outback hor­ror film and, inter­est­ingly, it has become the inspir­a­tion for one.

Kitty Green (dir­ect­or of the work­place #MeToo drama The Assistant and the doc­u­ment­ar­ies Ukraine is Not a Brothel and Casting JonBenet) has used the film as inspir­a­tion for The Royal Hotel1 which opens in the U.S. this week and plays the London Film Festival this weekend.

In it, the two Finnish back­pack­ers become American (Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) and the fears that remain mostly unspoken in Hotel Coolgardie become all too real.

1

Not to be con­fused (I hope) with the Royal Hotel in Featherston, New Zealand.

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