dogwater-1
See if only for the plumbing and the music. I can't think of anything more ghastly than spending time at an English spa treating digestive disorders. This is exactly what I would imagine it would be like. On a remote, rainy and rocky little spit of crab dung sits the Hotel Splendide run by the by the Blanche family who seem to have come there at some better time, maybe before ferry service was cut to once a month. There isn't a plot exactly: its more of a scripted hysteria. Very fine cast with Daniel Craig, Toni Collette, and particularly the late Katrin Cartlidge as a character who has wandered in from Black Narcissus. There is also an unusual performance by Stephen Tompkinson that'a unlike anything you are likely to see anywhere else. The cinematography also owes something to Jack Cardiff and the heyday of the Archers and their use of color. Toby Jones and Peter Vaughan round out, with young Hugh O'Connor, an excellent group of lost bowel obsessives existing mostly on various eel dishes. Try it.
angeloanti
Watched this on DVD. Never even heard of it until now. I always loved those weird British movies from the sixties and seventies which seem to have disappeared as a genre - until Hotel Splendide. It's astonishing, like a whole world that just appeared out of nowhere. It's a story about how families destroy each other and how you have to break away from your childish attitudes and dependency to be free. But, mostly it's just this completely charming and unpredictable look at a place and a group of people who seem completely real, but couldn't possibly exist. The movie it most reminded me of was Harold and Maude, though the story and characters are completely unrelated. Just something about the atmosphere and the humour.Can't stop thinking about it. A must see
tamsincoors
I'd never even heard of this movie. A friend of mine got the DVD in Australia - though the film is definitely Brit. Story is about this hotel on an island somewhere. Not sure if it actually exists or not. Has this totally Gothic weird feel, and it looks real - not like digital effects.It's about a kind of war between two cooks who end up falling in love with each other, but also about this bunch of incredibly (psychologically)damaged people who have all come here to get better and are really getting worse and worse. It feels like a real place but also completely other worldly. I watched it twice and can't stop thinking about it. The best part of this movie isn't so much what happens - though I really liked the story - it's the feeling it gives you. It just isn't like anything else I've ever seen. Closest movie that it reminds me of is Harold and Maude - though this is a lot more extreme. I think the main character is the new James Bond!
miseryguts36
I've with rbrb on this one. 98 minutes of my life I'll never get back. I can, in all honesty, say that this is the worst film I have EVER seen and I've seen Starsky and Hutch (and Morvern Callar)!! Any pleasant memories I've had of the Edinburgh Film Festival have been eroded by this film, which was so bad I can't shift it from my memory. It's like a recurring nightmare. One word sums it up for me: mess.There are no redeeming features for this "movie" and use the word movie in it's loosest terms. I suspect that the Tommy Lee-Pam Anderson home video has more cinematic credibility that this piece of nonsense. It angers me just thinking about it. As I recall the Cameo cinema showed this free to Cameo Film Club members and now I know why because you just wouldn't pay to see this out of choice.
AD
