Hotel

Jessica Hausner’s second film after the notorious Lovely Rita is a stylised suspense thriller like The Shining, but then all Austrian. The location is Hotel Waldhaus, deep in the dark Alpine forests. The young Irene gets a job as receptionist. She is just as respectable as the hotel itself and does not seem to be impressed by the obsession of her humourless employers with order, neatness and cleanliness. The endless, deserted concrete corridors with energy-saving light switches that would most make most people shrink back even seem to attract her rather than make her afraid. She finds out that her predecessor disappeared mysteriously, but asking questions only results in hostile glances and evasive answers. The police don’t seem to be interested either. In the meantime, Irene seems almost to start feeling at home in the ominous chill of these unpleasant surroundings that are presented as if they were a living creature, largely thanks to the work of soundman Frieder Glöckner and cameraman Martin Gschlacht. Hausner: ‘Recently I read the fairy-tales of Grimm out loud to a small girl and she loved them. (…) They describe the way good and evil exist side by side in the world and that sometimes you can be lucky and sometimes unlucky. In all their cruelty, they present a very realistic picture of the world.’ (GT)