HOTEL COOLGARDIE
Director: Pete Gleeson
Rating: (R16)
Four stars (out of five)
It’s easy to forget that good cinema is, and always will be, about observation. If you need constant visual effects, quirky humour and tacked-on philosophising to keep you entertained, then maybe it’s time to take a good look inward ... personally, I’m off to the pub.
Let me be quite clear, Hotel Coolgardie (Rialto) is a staggering piece of work that, despite a few flaws, I can’t recommend highly enough. Director Pete Gleeson has achieved what all film-makers should really aspire to, whether in fiction or otherwise, by capturing the truth of the human condition, the naked lunch for all to see, and putting it out there unconcerned with box office tallies or public approval ... but I digress ...
The hotel of the title is the Denver City Hotel in Coolgardie, WA, a small mining town, where every three months a couple of young, female, live-in bar staff, or as the locals call them, "fresh meat", are hired to pour middies, flirt with the punters, and generally take all the sexist abuse directed at them with good cheer and a cheeky turn of phrase.
Finnish backpackers Lina and Steph are the latest recruits, yet it becomes very quickly apparent that they’re tragically out of their depth in this alien world in which they’ve arrived. The cameras roll ...
- Jeremy Quinn
