Dave (Tom Vermeir) inherited the Hotel Poseidon from his late father and he spends his days in the dilapidated building wandering the halls and feeling miserable. One day a young woman knocks on the door looking for a room and Dave’s best friend tries to convince him to throw a lavish party in one of the hotel’s back rooms.
If the plot synopsis for ‘Hotel Poseidon’ seems short it’s because there isn’t much of a plot to speak of. Director Stefan Lernous has created an experience rather than a cohesive movie and it’ll depend on your tolerance for loose narratives whether or not you enjoy this. Closer to a Wes Anderson movie than anything else I can bring to mind, ‘Hotel Poseidon’ introduces a plethora of characters but it doesn’t do very much with them other than allow them to be quirky.
The film opens with a grumpy Dave clearly fed up with his life and being able to hear the sounds of his best friend through the wall. The colours used throughout the film are washed out to further signify that Dave is living a life that is decaying rather than blossoming as you’d expect for a man of his age. Trapped within the walls of the hotel, the film takes us through a series of interactions that get gradually more bizarre and as far as I could tell, don’t add much to the plot other than to be weird.
You feel, a bit like Dave, that you’re drifting through the film’s 90 minutes rather than engaging with them. With so little meaning to what’s going on, it’s hard to care and there’s certainly no character here that you can relate to. Tom Vermeir’s performance is entertaining enough but there’s only so much any actor can do with a character so underwritten that it borders on non-existent. The characters that surround him, such as his sexually outgoing friend Erika (Ruth Becquart), should bring more energy to the film but they don’t because they’re so bizarre that there’s nothing to hook into.
I’m sure some people will call ‘Hotel Poseidon’ a masterpiece but sadly I’m not one of them. I found the film largely inaccessible and the lack of a real structure – plot or otherwise – made me tire of it fairly quickly. I’m all for experimental directors and film-makers trying to do something but the characters and the material here is so cold, I just couldn’t warm to anything about the film. I can appreciate that the aesthetics are intriguing but that’s about as far as I can enthuse.
Cast: Tom Vermeir, Ruth Becquart, Anneke Sluiters, Tania Van der Sanden, Chiel Van Berkel Director: Stefan Lernous Writer: Stefan Lernous Certificate: 18 Duration: 90 mins Released by: Arrow Films
[rwp-reviewer-rating-stars id=”0″]
