Hotel (2004)

 

Director: Jessica Hausner

Screenplay: Jessica Hausner

Cast: Franziska Weisz as Irene; Birgit Minichmayr as Petra; Marlene Streeruwitz as Frau Maschek; Peter Strauß as Herr Kos; Regina Fritsch as Frau Karin; Rosa Waissnix as Frau Liebig; Alfred Worel as Liebig

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #261

 

I did not expect the opening theme to sound like it is from a giallo, and then you learn it is the elevator music of Hotel Waudhaus which sporadically plays, due to faults, when it plays. Hotel the film, from Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hauser, however is not conventional at all. It is in many ways a film difficult to review because, if you try to explain its minimalist content, you spoil it, and when I say minimalistic, I mean that. It is a horror film, but as stripped back, closer to supernatural drama, with nothing actually seen.

Irene (Franziska Weisz) is a new employee at Hotel Waudhaus, who replaces a woman who has vanished. The film intermingles many subtly suggested plot points without stressing them. The previous employee has vanished, because the police are looking for her, and the film hints at the supernatural through the "Lady of the Woods", a witch in the 16th century who, in 1591, was burned at the stake and is the folk lore figure promoted in the hotel itself. It can be hinted at she may be involved, but you never see anything. The only suspicious detail is whether, in the dark and vast woodlands outside, whether you hear a bird call or a woman screaming when a certain sound is heard. The film was designed by its director-writer to be elusive, to have a continuous sense of foreboding but never show the threat¹.

The film for the most part is the banality of running a hotel, contrasted by the stresses and banal pettiness of people. Irene must put up with co-workers who play music loud and party when she wants to sleep, ostracising her when she does not follow their requests. A crucifix, which becomes important as a literal charm against evil least for my interpretation, becomes connected to this, whether it was stolen by a colleague or something else makes it briefly vanish. The seniors who run Waudhaus follow outdated attitudes alongside their egos, such as banning the female staff from having boyfriend, when Irene is gladly helping at the hotel, placed in a position isolated from the world where the only really sympathetic staff member, an older religious woman, warns her to leave very early on.

The hotel itself is also mysterious, or at least depicted within the same tone as Stanley Kubrick depicted the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980), a cold ominous place of countless unending corridors here. Its atmosphere may mean nothing but still paint the eeriness Irene feels within the place the moment she find an extra pair of glasses belonging to the previous employee in her room. A large factor to the film's tone is that it is minimalist in aesthetic. A cold tone, but also because whilst this is not part of the "slow cinema" movement of the era, Hausner decided to still shot this with a static style with little camera movement and still scenes to tell the story. It works, because with a film which tells a lot without having to explain a great deal, it is able to be very simple in what the narrative is but without having to stress it, this minimalistic aesthetic helping greatly.

This is also where trying to write more than a little would undercut Hotel as it is based on mood. Themes can be ascribed - that this reflects the past still entrenched in the modern day - but this simple narrative told by this tone really stands out. It did on the first viewing lead to the film having a muted reaction from me, but upon multiple viewings, I came to appreciate this tone and storytelling and admire it greatly.

 

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1) As referred in this interview on the film HERE.