How Culture Travels

Sonja Heiss’ HOTEL VERY WELCOME (Germany) is an appropriate film to experience while part of the otherworldliness of the Berlinale Talent Campus. The film weaves together the experiences of five very different European tourists in Asia: Joshua and Adam, two young English guys on a drinking holiday in Thailand; Liam, an Irishman exploring India; Marion, a German woman taking part in an Indian meditation camp for Westerners, and finally Svenja, who, stuck in a hotel room in Bangkok, develops a phone relationship with a Thai travel agent despite barely being able to communicate with him.

In its exploration of the issues of identity and communication that emerge when in a foreign country, HOTEL makes an interesting comparison with LOST IN TRANSLATION (Sofia Coppola, USA). The most apparent difference between the two films is that while LOST deals with characters whose reason for traveling is business (and whose relationship, and subsequent growth, occurs inadvertently), HOTEL is about characters actively seeking something: escape, peace, connection or just a good time. Additionally, while LOST’s characters are mainly influenced by each other, with Tokyo merely serving as an appropriate backdrop, the drama of HOTEL is in the way that the characters are influenced by and interact with their environment.

However, the film’s form is such that the word drama may not at first seem like an appropriate one. Shot in remarkably warm and sensual video, on location in Thailand and India, it’s at times so naturalistic as to feel like a travelogue. The minutae of each character’s trip are acutely observed: from idle airport lounge chitchat to running for trains to hotel showers that won’t work, and the extent to which scenes are scripted or planned (clearly most of the supporting cast are non-actors) is mostly indecipherable.

This documentary-like approach means that scenes, and the film in total, aren’t structured in an obviously narrative way. But the film’s narrative is subtle rather than insubstantial. The different threads (most of which do not intersect with each other) are intercut in a way that serves to compare, contrast and raise questions about the different ways the characters exist outside of their own culture, and what they try to get out of it. This is a tactic that, handled any broader, could result in hamfisted point-making. But, treated in this delicate way, it manages to be incisive in its description (the English lager louts in particular are painfully accurate) — and yet balanced enough to remain ambiguous (the portrayal of the Indian meditation camp, for example, manages to imply the weaknesses of such a place without mocking or degrading it).

What emerges out of all this is a provocative image of what it means to travel, why we do it and how our culture coexists with others when we do. Is Liam the Irishman romanticizing when he says to his guide in the desert that it’s “the perfect place to think”? Is Marion’s wish to “find herself” in India misguided or admirable? Is there any link between the two Englishmen’s disconnection from each other and their lack of engagement with the culture they’re visiting?

Ultimately these questions exist not to be answered, but to be applied to our own lives. And for the filmmakers from 100 different cultures currently interacting at the Berlinale Talent Campus, they’re certainly timely ones.

Donal Foreman

URL of the Text: http://www.talentpress.org/home/3/viewentry/1222