Jars Full of Snakes: How The Royal Hotel Puts Toxic Masculinity Under the Spotlight
Inspired by true events, Aussie Director Kitty Green crafts an outback “social thriller” that asks us where we’d draw the line.
good.film
a year ago
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Why should I see The Royal Hotel?
Subtle yet volatile, the film authentically captures how complicated gender dynamics can be, putting us in the shoes of women who simply want to know, “Am I safe?”
What social causes does the film explore?
Female Empowerment, Survivors & Victims
Physically and mentally, life gets pretty confronting when you’re a long way from the big smoke. It’s a factor that Australian films have traded on with stunning effect over the years - from our vast landscape in films like Walkabout or Last Cab to Darwin, to the emotional impact of extreme isolation (look no further than Wake in Fright or Wolf Creek).
With The Royal Hotel, Australian writer-director Kitty Green explores a different dynamic: the social confrontation of entering a tiny remote community, where aggressive masculinity isn’t the exception, it’s the norm, and the C-word buzzes through the air more often than the flies.
We see the South Australian country town of Yatina (pop. 29) through the eyes of Hanna and Liv, American backpackers who are out of cash and forced to take the only jobs they can find: barmaids at the Royal. For a town with barely any water and zero phone signal, it’s about the only place the local mine workers can connect and get lubricated.
Have Hanna and Liv just stepped into a snakes nest (shoutout to the row of dead snakes bottled in jars along the bar!) or are the string of dated jokes and microaggressions all down to a cultural and generational mismatch?
“The whole question of the film is, ‘Is this place a threat or not? Is this man a threat or not?’. We've tried to subtly build this tension without being too overt.”
- Kitty Green, Writer/Director
What’s the origin story of The Royal Hotel?
The film is inspired by the feature documentary Hotel Coolgardie, which director Kitty Green first saw as a jury member at an Australian film festival in 2017. Kitty was riveted by the story of two young Scandinavian women trapped in an Australian mining town.
Green had seen films set in Aussie pubs before, many of them in remote communities, but never one from this point of view: through a female lens.
“Kitty was really interested in telling this outback story, but through a female gaze - to use the masculinity of that world as the fuel for the story.”
- Emile Sherman, Producer
Kitty had just completed The Assistant (also with Julia Garner in the lead), which dealt with related themes, including workplace gender inequality, sexual harassment and misconduct. And yet Hotel Coolgardie immediately inspired and excited her as it seemed more expansive.
“This clash of cultures felt like a fascinating way into a broader discussion about drinking culture, toxic masculinity and gender politics. It was a rich and dynamic jumping-off point for a screenplay,” she says.
“Kitty has been able to portray something that most women will relate to - how hard it can be to judge whether or not you're safe and the impact this has on women.”
- Kath Shelper, Producer
What does The Royal Hotel have to say about drinking culture and microaggression?
Alcohol is a huge element in The Royal Hotel. Set in a pub, that’s no surprise, but it’s also a comment on the environment of the characters. Miles from nowhere, there’s no escape - and when there’s no escape, you drink to escape. To paraphrase Scarface, bar owner Billy’s been “getting high on his own supply” for years.
Does that explain why Billy bursts in on the girls to shut off the showers? Or, as he claims, was it because the weir’s at 13%, “and if it gets to 12, we’re fucked.” Clutching their towels, Hanna and Liv are startled, then bemused when, after Hanna explains her education, Billy describes her as a “smart c**t.” It’s the first in a barrage of microaggressions that, like pebbles on a scale, build up until Hanna can’t bear their weight.
“What did he just call me?!”, she later asks Liv, with a pinched smile of disbelief. “I don't think it means what you think it means,” Liv tries to reason. “It's a cultural thing." It’s a character point that we’ll see play out over the film: Liv is more laid back, more keen to embrace the atmosphere of their adventure and take words & actions at face value. Hanna is more wary; more protective of their boundaries and more perceptive of any underlying threats.
Our take? Liv finds it harder to imagine the unimaginable - violence and/or rape. And her way of dealing with that deep and gendered fear is to downplay or excuse any dodgy behaviour. Brush it off, let’s just relax and have fun! But Hanna is much more sensitive to the hum of violence and trauma (she makes a later reference to her Mum having a drinking problem). Her radar in this alien environment is on higher alert than Liv’s.
Their first night at work is an eye-opener, to put it mildly (there’s literally a chalkboard out the front saying “Fresh Meat!” above a hand-drawn pair of breasts). Sexual innuendo is flowing faster than the beers on tap, and “advice” from Billy and one of the older regulars, Glenda, would be more at home in a 1930’s gin bar. “It wouldn’t hurt you to smile a bit more… and lean over the bar when you’re serving them!” they cackle. Even lighting a candle on a birthday cake means glancing at a novelty lighter with a nude model on it (an item that gets used in a pivotal way later on). Hanna’s nearly ready to bail, telling Liv later: “They're disgusting!"
Kitty Green slowly builds the atmosphere of apprehension in the bar; her camera zooming into Hanna & Liv’s discomfort after another lewd crack or R-rated nickname is chucked around. You can feel the air change. It’s not quite danger, but it’s not far from it: they’re powerless, and the only thing close to an authority here (or a “peacekeeping” safety figure) is Billy the bar owner… yeah, the same guy who burst in on them showering.
Sexual taunts and comments can be downplayed as “just jokes” or “only words”, but they make objects of Hanna and Liv - and objectification is a key stepping stone towards violence. If things got out of hand, we really feel the potential for two slim, short women to easily come to harm from some blue collar blokes nearly twice their size. And there’s no authority on their side to step in and stop any violence that erupts.
A fascinating aspect to The Royal Hotel is that neither Hanna nor Liv are right or wrong about how they respond to these foreign, hypermale surroundings. Liv smiles and flirts to try and placate the men, while Hanna is more guarded and tries to keep clear boundaries. It’s not that they’re not attracted to some of the guys… it’s just that the aggressive social norms, and their near-total isolation, makes even a potential attraction feel unsafe.
The questions Green poses are tricky to neatly answer (because, hey, there are no neat answers). Are any of these men safe? Will they protect them from the other men? Do they expect anything in return for that protection? We’re left to decide how we’d manage the knife’s edge that Hanna and Liv find themselves walking.
How does The Royal Hotel explore trauma and toxic masculinity?
When we meet Hanna and Liv on a party boat in Sydney Harbour, we’re filling in our own blanks as to their background. At the Royal Hotel, the hints start to drop. When one of the locals asks Liv why they came out here, she covertly replies, “It was the furthest away.” Later, they question why their getaway feels like it’s gone so badly off the rails: "We were supposed to get away from everything back home."
Kitty Green leaves it open for us to interpret what Hanna and Liv are running from, but it’s easy to surmise it’s an abusive relationship, whether it’s within a family, from a partner, or - like the role Julia Garner played for Green in The Assistant - in a workplace.
That deepens how we feel about what Hanna and Liv have to fend off from the men who now surround them. It’s playful at first - like when the seemingly charming Matty convinces them to come with him on a drive out to a waterhole. But the vibe swings from sexy playfulness to awkward mistrust - and when Hanna rebuffs Matty’s advances, we can literally feel her fear that this rejection will trigger his aggression.
Later, another local asks Liv out in front of the whole bar, and when she turns him down, his “mates” all laugh him out of the pub. In his haste to escape, he crashes his ute - the ultimate Aussie male emasculation. But rather than pity, we’re instead left feeling fearful that his wounded male pride will somehow mutate into even further violence.
It’s one of the best things The Royal Hotel does: portraying the catch-22 of women having to “manage” men (we see this in multiple interactions). You could not engage, like Hanna, and risk being called a “sour c**t”... or worse. But if you flirt to ease the tension like Liv, will you get accused of "leading him on" when you later reject him? These are the kind of behaviours and contexts that provide ground cover to men, for acts that are far from consensual. It’s a super grey area that Kitty Green willingly explores.
It’s tough to convey in words just how malevolent The Royal Hotel feels at given points. And it’s no silly slasher - it’s all set in truth, and that authenticity is key. When the film escalates into a final confrontation between Hanna and Matty that we won’t spoil here, she lets out a primal scream. It feels like it encapsulates the frustration, injustice and rage that’s been building, bit by bit, since they arrived.
“I wanted to create a work that women could be excited about; a film that would encourage conversation about gender politics. Our central question was ‘How do we make this a film about female strength versus a film about bad men?’”
- Kitty Green, Writer/Director
What are critics saying about The Royal Hotel?
“Green gets us looking for danger in every scene — she’s taken us here, to this extremely specific place, to sharpen our awareness of the tiniest red flags that flap around the globe.”
- Amy Nicholson, Variety
“The line between a gaze and a leer can be terribly thin — and The Royal Hotel shows in taut, tense sequences how being accommodating only works so well as a defence mechanism.”
- Shirley Li, The Atlantic
“Green continues to establish herself as an insightful chronicler of the minor yet devastating terrors of violent masculinity that many women endure everywhere they go.”
- Marya Gates, RogerEbert dot com
“The Royal Hotel simmers with the heat of oppressive testosterone at a pub in the Australian Outback. That is, until it boils over with cathartic female rage.”
- Hanna Flint, London Evening Standard
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the takeaway from The Royal Hotel?
The Royal Hotel kicks off as a classic backpacker outing, full of quirky Aussie references to Gaytimes, Fosters and keys to the servo dunnies attached to the biggest items possible. But through a combo of savvy directing, sharp editing and truly intimidating performances, halfway through we’re on the edge of our seat, feeling the fear of these young women and wondering if we would’ve already nicked the nearest ute and made a run from the joint by now.
When Hanna tells Liv on the verge of tears, "I'm scared - I'm scared of everyone in this place!" we believe her, because we feel it too. And when she reaches her breaking point and the locals still insist “Hey love, we need drinks in here!”, we fist pump Hanna’s steeliness as she spits back at them, “We’re fucking shut!” to focus instead on Liv’s welfare.
Without spoiling the final moments, Green combines two emblems we’ve seen within the film to provide a fitting catharsis. If the Royal is a motif for male toxicity, then Hanna and Liv administer the antidote without even looking back. It’s up to you to decide if a line was crossed. In that way, The Royal Hotel is a modern social metaphor that raises more questions than it answers - and that’s a very good thing.
When is The Royal Hotel movie coming out?
The Royal Hotel is now showing in cinemas around Australia. Buy a Good Tix to see the film for less and support a good cause!
