After landing on my Best of 2020 list with the chilling and rather emblematic The Assistant, I was definitely curious to see what writer/director/editor Kitty Green would come up with next. And sticking to her roots as a documentarian, she pulled inspiration from the doco Hotel Coolgardie to tell the story of two American backpackers who find themselves in the middle of woop woop, working at a bar until they can make enough to continue their trip. Well, if they make it that far, that is.
Right from the start, with a pounding drum ‘n’ bass remix of Men At Work’s Down Under, some pretty major statements are made when it comes to the national cultural identity and how it’s packaged for visitors. A smoky nightclub dance floor, where unknowing tourists ask for Fosters from bartenders in lifeguard costumes, transitioning outside onto the deck of a party boat right next to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Considering ‘American tourists go overseas and run afoul of the locals’ is basically its own sub-genre (what I like to call the Ugly American Travelogue), it sets things up decently as far as the marketing surrounding that initial decision. It’s like a less homicidal spin on similar points made by Infinity Pool.
From there, the story resembles a cross between The Assistant and Wolf Creek, showing Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) dealing with sexist microaggressions as part of everyday life working at the titular rundown pub, with the physical and social isolation and alienation making their present predicament that much more daunting. While I personally think that the filmmakers could have gone a bit further in really highlighting just how remote this place is, with the cramped space within the pub taking precedent, it still gets across how deeply, horrifically uncomfortable this all is.
Unlike with The Assistant, though, the depressive gut-punch at the heart of this one didn’t really click with me… although I’m willing to concede that that might be more a problem on my end than the film’s. I grew up around Sydney pubs thanks to family who worked in them. I was writing cocktail recipes long before I was old enough to drink any of them, I spend quite a bit of time around pub comedians, and in general, there’s something about the aesthetic that I find very nostalgic. For me, it represents the kind of laidback social atmosphere that I actually like about this place.
As a result of all that, I found myself struggling to really connect with how bad the behaviour Hanna and Liv are subjected to is. I’ll admit that, when it got to Hugo Weaving’s drunken owner of the pub calling them cunts, and Hanna being aghast at that, I chuckled quite a bit. As vulgar as the word is considered over in the States, ‘cunt’ is about as normalised as language realistically gets around here, to the point where it might as well be the national word. As such, there’s something about how offended Americans can be about it, as opposed to how freely it’s used and even intended over here, that just makes me smile.
But I recognise that this is a matter of familiarity with
the environment. It’s easy to look at, say, the innards of the American
entertainment industry and point out the inherent problems and systemic issues
within, when you’re not actively part of that same work culture. It’s quite
another to have grown up in similar environments, and even associate them with
warm nostalgic feelings, and then try to reckon with how legitimately
threatening those same spaces can be for others. The constant lustful
attention, the casual harassment, the disregard because all those involved are
either just ‘used to’ behaving this way or simply because no-one would stop
them; it really isn’t that different from what is shown in The Assistant.
It just replaces a coffee mug for a goon bag.
Hell, even while I admit to having issues with properly engaging with the intended dread of the events on-screen, that’s only really an issue during the first half. Once things start to really boil over, mainly to do with the actions of the frustratingly clueless Matty (Toby Wallace from Babyteeth) and the properly terrifying Dolly (Daniel Henshall from Snowtown), the position that our two leads have found themselves in comes forth as truly unnerving. Doubly so because, as I found myself questioning my own gut reactions to what’s going on, so too did the leads continue to split about their own. Hanna has her head on straight throughout and actively recognises how precarious their situation is, while Liv is more easygoing and willing to handwave a lot of it as ‘culture shock’. Then things get worse and… yeah. Yeah, I get the feeling I have some shit to deal with after watching this.
This is definitely one of the odder experiences I’ve had with a film in a while. Most of the time, I treat films as one-and-dones that might get revisited later on for one reason or another, but otherwise, my engagement with them ends once I stop writing about them. This one hits different. It feels like there’s something vital in this that I really need to wrap my head around, like there’s crucial context I’m missing within my own connection with my feelings before I can truly give this film its fair due. I mean, it’s still good, it works as the visceral slow burn it intends to be… but I get the feeling that I’ll randomly decide to watch this again in a few years’ time, and it’ll be like several puzzle pieces snap into place all at once. Until then, though, I certainly won’t be forgetting my first-time experience with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment