What young women must endure is the theme of Kitty Green's two features. It was the focus of her debut, "The Assistant," in which the title character (Julia Garner) was abused and harassed in her workplace by a Harvey Weinstein-like boss. And it is the theme in her intense new film, "The Royal Hotel," where two women Liv (Jessica Henwick) and Hanna (Julia Garner) are abused and harassed in the title establishment, a bar in the Australian outback.
The film is inspired by the documentary "Hotel Coolgardie," but it also feels like a distaff cousin of "Wake in Fright," the ferocious 1971 Ted Kotcheff film about a schoolteacher stranded in the outback filled with drunk and violent men.
