Kitty Green

The Royal Hotel

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Hanna and Liv on the road

Writer/director Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel slots into the “people having a terrible time in the Outback” groove but her follow-up to The Assistant is also its own distinctive beast. It’s more Wake in Fright than Wolf Creek, with its subjects/victims being tested to their psychological limits rather than out-and-out monstered. It’s a “thriller” says the IMDb, and quite a few reviews say it is too. But it’s a funny sort of thriller, coming across more as a human drama with a lurking sense of threat unsettling enough almost for it to be counted as a horror movie. But on to the plot. Two young women backpacking their way around the world wind … Read more

The Assistant

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Jane, the assistant, with two men in the background

“It’s about Harvey Weinstein,” is how The Assistant is often shorthanded. Yes, but no. At a basic level Kitty Green’s bracingly edgy film really is about an assistant at a movie production house ruled over by a predatory tycoon. At another it’s about the way low-status individuals – women in this case – are treated in general. It’s not all sexual misconduct either. The Assistant makes it clear, even from the weak position of those two words on the screen in the opening credits (bottom right, the last stop on the eyes’ journey) that status bleeds into every aspect of human relations. Take the early scene where the rookie assistant, Jane, is silently waiting … Read more