Hotel (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | hotel |
| Original title | hotel |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | Austrian German |
| Publishing year | 2004 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jessica Hausner |
| script | Jessica Hausner |
| production | coop99 , Essential film production |
| camera | Martin Gschlacht |
| cut | Karina Ressler |
| occupation | |
| |
Hotel is an Austrian film by Jessica Hausner from 2004 , which combines elements of the horror film and the psychological thriller .
action
Irene, a reserved young woman, takes up her new job as a receptionist in the remote mountain hotel Waldhaus . At the beginning, she is shown the basement, which will be part of her daily duties to check. The note that the supplier entrance must always be closed ends with the following sentence: “The devil is not sleeping” .
Irene learns that her predecessor Eva has mysteriously disappeared. In her official hotel apartment, she finds a case in a drawer with the inscription EVA S. and red-framed glasses. She later recognizes Eva by means of these glasses in the hotel manager's office on a group photo of the staff. From the beginning, Irene is exposed to a high degree of detachment and coolness from her colleagues and superiors. One of the few moments when Irene smiles and looks satisfied are the phone calls with her mother.
In a nearby discotheque, Irene met Erik, with whom she was soon in a relationship. At a meeting he shows her a dark grotto in the forest. The plaque placed next to the cave entrance explains the legend of the so-called forest woman, a herb woman who was burned at the stake as a witch in 1591 . In 1962, hikers who had set up camp for the night near the grotto are said to have disappeared. Irene and Erik go into the cave and kiss there. Shortly afterwards Irene discovers a tree near the cave entrance, on which couples apparently have immortalized themselves with carvings; the last pair of names she reads is Eva and Dragan . On the way home she sees police officers or detectives searching a pond with poles. Irene goes into the forest several times in the course of the plot and later also enters the cave that Erik showed her. After one of her evening swims in the hotel's indoor pool, Irene finds her glasses broken on the floor and discovers that her previously discarded necklace with a cross pendant - her lucky charm - has disappeared. That same evening, Irene cannot sleep due to loud music and complains to her colleagues who play darts , dance and get drunk in a room on the same floor . The complaint is ignored by the colleagues and Irene leaves the room angrily.
The next day, Irene reports the suspected theft of the hotel manager's necklace. This later confronts the assembled workforce, which makes the distant behavior of her colleagues even worse. The chain reappears some time later, the boss just explains succinctly that it was found in the forest . Instead of her broken glasses, Irene is now putting on her predecessor's red glasses.
Irene spends the first night together with Erik in their hotel room. When Erik then gets dressed in the dark, he accidentally presses the alarm button instead of the light switch, which prompts Frau Liebig, cleaner and caretaker of the hotel, to check that everything is OK. When Irene apologized the next day for the inconvenience to Frau Liebig, she asked about the group photo and asked if she could tell her something about Eva. Frau Liebig only replies “Get away from here” and then mumbles a short prayer.
One night Irene wanders through the wellness area and turns into a corridor that ends in complete darkness. She disappears into the darkness, says quiet prayers there and suddenly finds herself in the nocturnal forest. Then something - accompanied by a sharp, high-pitched scream - seems to be moving rapidly towards her from behind. Irene turns and lets out a silent scream. Whether this was just Irene's nightmare or even anticipates the final scenario of the film remains unclear.
To get closer to her colleagues, Irene joins them on their next wet and happy evening. Although she is ignored, Irene stays in the room, but resignedly crouches in an armchair and falls asleep. When she wakes up, she is alone and finds the head of a forest Woman doll in her lap, she throws away in disgust.
Two police officers talk in the hotel lobby and then leave with Frau Liebig. Petra, Irene's colleague at the reception, then says “Now you've found it” . Irene's question about what was found is answered with a disinterested shrug. When the staff eat together, the seats of Mrs. Liebig and her husband, who is also employed in the hotel, remain empty.
Irene gets new glasses from an optician. At the hotel, she asks Petra to swap shifts with her so she can go home to her family. Petra later demands to be allowed to borrow Irene's lucky charm necklace, which she is reluctant to agree to. While walking through the wellness area, Irene discovers a corridor that seems to end in complete darkness. She walks down the hall into the darkness, but the hall ends in front of a wall and a cupboard. When Irene leaves the hotel late in the evening through the delivery entrance to smoke in the course of her cellar inspection, she then has to find out that she is locked out. She goes into the adjacent forest and slowly disappears into the darkness between the trees. After a while you hear someone or something screeching.
The film ends with a young woman who wears glasses similar to Irene and who is apparently her successor, has an interview at the hotel. (This scene is missing on the DVD version of the film).
Stylistic devices
Jessica Hausner creates a feeling of constant discomfort from the first minute. Cold, dark rooms, fluorescent lamps, corridors centered on a central perspective , the ends of which are hidden in the shadow, and an enchanted forest create an eerie, disturbing atmosphere. The individual scenes, even within the hotel, are not spatially related to one another, the viewer should share the oppressive feeling of the main character, to be strange and surrounded by latent threats.
The plot is roughly reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's Shining ; here, too, the setting is a remote hotel, in which the predecessor of the main character was involved in terrible or mysterious events. In addition, an old group photo on a wall of the hotel is important. References to David Lynch's films can also be seen, including the red curtain, the corridors that seem to end in the dark, and the use of room noise as a stylistic device. In addition, the viewer is not granted "redemption" through a traditional ending or dissolution, rather the unease that is always present should persist even after the open ending. The legend of the forest witch and the associated disappearance of hikers in the forest are reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project . The noises of the flickering neon light in the basement, the mention of the timer of the last light switch and the threatening, unexpected darkness and the red alarm buttons on the walls of the rooms also reveal similarities to Ole Bornedal's Nightwatch .
useful information
The film premiered in the Official Program of the Cannes International Film Festival 2004 in the Un Certain Regard series.
Rosa Waissnix, who played Ms. Liebig, is not a professional actress, but the owner of the hotel where the film was shot.
In Austria and especially in Styria there are some legends about forest women. These are mostly friendly, well-meaning beings, whereas in the film the impression arises that the forest woman symbolizes the evil and frightening, which is reinforced by the forest woman doll, which is displayed in a showcase in the hotel.
Reviews
“The atmospherically dense, multi-layered horror film uses conventions of the genre and reflects them, focusing not on shock, but on uncertainty and disturbance. Composed in a precise style, everyday images of a repressive society merge with allusions with the mysterious atmosphere of a Grimm fairy tale. "
“Hausner has now succeeded in doing a small, mean work that is more effective than any other German-language cinema film for three decades. [...] Similar to the disturbing visions of Michael Haneke, the fear unfolds above all through a consequent disregard of any film convention, beginning with the practically wordless script in which each of the extremely rare sentences raises three to four new questions. "
“Undoubtedly remarkable in Jessica Hausner's film is this form of social nightmare experienced by the main character, who easily refers to the conventions of horror tales as well as the basic rules of horror film - a horror film, however, which has emphatically removed the obligatory scenes in order to search for what ordinary and primitive horror society itself harbors. "
"The corridors in 'Hotel' are reminiscent of Kubrick's 'Shining', the swimming pool of Tourneurs 'Cat People', everything vaguely reminds of something, only what he himself wants, the film cannot remember because of sheer academic zeal for deconstruction."
“Again and again, genuine genre images appear that seem to keep the promise that the subject claims to contain. But the individual elements of the plot persistently refuse to lead to an exciting, gruesome character study or the like. The fragmentation of the action space corresponds to the systematic destruction of contexts of meaning. Jessica Hausner refuses to tell a story. "
Awards
- Large Diagonale Prize 2005
- Thomas Pluch Screenplay Award 2005
- Leeds International Film Festival - Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver 2005
- Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis 2005 Max Ophüls Prize nomination
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age rating for hotels . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Hotel on the pages of the artechock film magazine
- ↑ sagen.at - Share of wild Miss and forest Women
- ↑ Dirk Jaspers Film Lexicon ( Memento from October 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Daniel Bickermann at www.filmzentrale.com
- ^ Austrian Film Commission - press echoes, Cannes 2004
- ^ "Psychological thriller with remorse in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
- ↑ Film review on critic.de
Web links
- Hotel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official website of the film
- Hotel ( Memento from October 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) in the Dirk Jaspers Film Lexicon