Will there be kangaroos? Canadian backpackers Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are travelling through Australia. After running out of money while partying hard in Sydney, they take up an employment agency’s offer to work as bartenders at the Royal Hotel, a pub in a remote outback mining town. They are collected off the bus in the middle of nowhere by Aboriginal woman Carol (Ursula Yovich) who is married tomeet the pub’s owner Billy (Hugo Weaving). Carol also works as the pub’s chef. Hanna and Liv’s first shift is handling a raucous farewell party for their predecessors, English girls Jules (Alex Malone) and Cassie (Kate Cheel). While working, they meet several of the regulars. Hanna is disturbed by the casual sexism, misogynistic jokes and inappropriate behaviour displayed by the mostly male regulars. Liv brushes it off as a culture shock. The next day, Jules and Cassie are driven back into town by a mysterious local named Dolly (Daniel Henshall). Jules says she forgot her hat. Matty (Toby Wallace) a young regular at the pub who flirted with Hanna and Liv the previous night, pays the girls a visit and the group goes swimming nearby. Hanna begins to bond with Matty. Returning, they observe Billy and Carol’s unstable relationship and learn that alcoholic Billy has not paid aboriginal deliveryman Tommy (Baykali Ganambarr) for the past three months, to Carol’s chagrin. That night in the girls’ upstairs living quarters, while Liv is asleep, Hanna rebuffs Matty’s attempts to have sex, before ordering him to leave. In the morning, Matty apologises to Hanna. Over the next few nights, Hanna continues to endure harassment and microaggressions by the pub patrons, while Liv is embraced by the regulars for her easygoing attitude. Liv starts slacking off at work and joins the regulars in drinking, striking up a friendship with local miner Teeth (James Frecheville). One quiet night after a very drunken Liv goes to bed early and leaves Hanna to work alone, a drunk and aggressive Dolly antagonises Hanna and a few patrons celebrating a wedding anniversary before he is finally forced to leave by Billy. Hanna is rattled but Liv thinks Dolly is harmless. When a snake invades the girls’ living quarters, Dolly offers to retrieve it. The next morning, Hanna discovers Dolly has left the dead snake in a jar with her name on it which upsets her further. Liv once again dismisses Hanna’s concerns. After unsuccessfully attempting to get Dolly banned from the pub, Hanna announces that she and Liv are quitting but Billy refuses to pay them … We’re travelling. We wanted an adventure. Co-written by director Kitty Green and Oscar Redding, this is inspired by Pete Gleeson’s 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie. It also has inevitable echoes of the outback classic Wake in Fright. The horrible men, the vile banter and the older woman who seems to revel in the sexist culture all call to mind that famous thriller. Just a few more weeks. Things change 45 minutes in, or at the midpoint. The atmosphere shifts and those microaggressions add up to a situation that feels altogether more threatening. We were supposed to be getting away from everything back home. Tension ratchets up between the girls. You’re the embarrassment, Liv tells her friend and a world of hostility emerges, in public, between them, among the men and perhaps it’s Liv’s racial origins that make her more at home in this rag tag bunch of rough-minded miners who definitely have a plan. It’s admirably done because it’s never completely obvious what the threat might be but as the girls become divided by their responses and a Shakespearean storm starts to rage the real characters behind the drunken bonhomie straighten them out about what is in store. Reuniting with her director from The Assistant, Garner gets the lion’s share of the emotional responses once Henwick’s Liv succumbs to the thrum of male hormones and overconsumption of the alcohol she’s serving but as the story cleaves to a generic conclusion to bring things to a head the realistic pacing and depiction run out of gas somewhat, for all the ironic Kylie classics on the soundtrack. I’m scared of this place
mondomovies 