Hotel Splendide

This is one of the strangest, most bizarre films I've watched - but it was splendid and hilarious!!! Great cast and wonderfully fun - but you need a sense of humor to watch it!!!!

Tale of a resort and health spa, on a remote island off the coast. Lots of time spent talking about the health treatments, the menu, and the heating system... the miserly old patriarch owner, Mrs. Blanche has passed on, and now the family can spruce it all up. If they can only agree on what's to be done. When Kath (Collette), a former employee returns, the cook (daniel craig) refuses to work with her. Stanley (Hugh O'Conor, the irish one!) is the nightly entertainment, and is watching the wacky goings on. He wants to leave, but is scared of crossing the water. So he stays. This zany film was one of Craig's quirky ones, before he started playing James Bond. Collette has done so many of these fun, indie films, she seems to really excel in this category. It's a ton of fun. Even when bad stuff happens, it's light and fluffy and fun. I'll definitely watch this one again. Directed by Terence Gross. Story by Marie Redonnet, french author.

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.

What an odd movie to pop up on my list of recommendation on Prime. The cast is excellent (I'll watch anything with Daniel Craig), but the ensemble is amazing. The precis presented by Prime is incorrect -- the young woman returning to the monstrosity that is the Hotel Splendide is the former lover, not the sister, of the chef, and this change turned what I thought might be a quirky comedy into a rather dark but still lively exploration of what happens when the dead refuse to die. The atmosphere of this film is somewhere between Grand Budapest Hotel and Amalie -- I definitely feel the shades of Jeunot and Caro flitting about -- but the revolution which occurs is quintessentially British -- low key, strange, and ultimately enlightening.

rbrb is a twit. if you do not understand this movie, then you might not like it. but for those who do, it is excellent. the movie is about this crazy woman (deceased) who is obsessed with obscure 'health' ideas such as no sugar, no alcohol, in fact, nothing that tastes the slightest bit good. she has this hotel and brainwashes her children and all the guests into staying there convincing them that to leave the island meant death from various illnesses and so forth. she convinces them that there is nothing on the outside, that crossing the water will kill them, etc etc etc. the surviving family, especially the son, try to carry on her crazy lifestyle, partly by using recorded sounds of her voice played over a speaker system.

but the hotel hires a new chef, she brings revolution, with her cakes and things that taste good... to the chagrin of the son, and the worry of many of the other residents. but others love her new ways and in fact welcome the revolution. and.. well.. you will just have to see the rest of the movie.

it is a metaphor for anyone who has been in a situation where they were brainwashed into thinking a certain way of life was necessary, that dependence was necessary, etc etc . if you dont understand this then perhaps you should mature past the age of, oh, say, 12, and get out more and understand other peoples experiences, and watch movies besides terminator 3 and independence day.