Hotel Splendide

4 April 2015

Hotel Splendide 2000

• Director: Terence Gross
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartlidge, Stephen Tompkinson, Hugh O’Conor, Helen McCrory, Peter Vaughn, Tony Jones, Dan Hildebrand
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Toni Collette – Little Miss Sunshine, In Her Shoes, The Hours, About a Boy, Changing Lanes, The Sixth Sense, Velvet Goldmine, Muriel’s Wedding
• Daniel Craig – Defiance, Flashbacks of a Fool, Infamous, Road to Perdition, Elizabeth
• Katrin Cartlidge – From Hell, Topsy-Turvy, Career Girls, Breaking the Waves, Naked
• Stephen Tompkinson – Taming of the Shrew Retold, Brassed Off
• Hugh O’Conor – Chocolat, My Left Foot
• Helen McCrory – Hugo, Harry Potter, Becoming Jane, The Queen
• Peter Vaughn – Longitude, Les misérables, Our Mutual Friend, Remains of the Day, Brazil, The French Lieutenant’s Woman,
• Toby Jones – The Hunger Games films, My Week with Marilyn, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Creation, Frost/Nixon, Amazing Grace, Infamous, Mrs Henderson Presents. Finding Neverland, Ladies in Lavender, Harry Potter (Dobby’s voice), Joan of Arc, EverAfter, Les misérables, Naked, Orlando
• Why?  Toni Collette, Katrin Cartlidge, and I love the film
• Seen:  Once before. Now: March 28, 2015 

Any film with Toni Collette and Katrin Cartlidge has to be amazing. I remember this one as being weird and loveable. I think it might be the film where I made the acquaintance with these two favourites. Now I see that other coming stars are in it – and odd and young Daniel Craig, an unchanging Toby Jones, and many others I’ve seen in so many other films.

It’s as absurd as I remember it. The Hotel Splendide is an enormous monster of a mansion on an isolated island off the coast of Somewhere British. Guests who arrive never leave. Each one is more bizarre than the last.  The family who runs the place is as dysfunctional as they come.

It’s a mix of Brazil, Fawlty Towers and Charlie Chaplin. It’s a hate/love story, a battle of the chefs, a conflict between cold showers, abstention and enemas, and epicurean lust for life.

Bizarre, absurd, weird – these words hardly begin to describe it. Add heart-warming and heart-breaking, daft, sweet, bittersweet, poignant, eccentric, haunting – in more ways than one – and you might get the idea. 

4 ½ * of 5