The Hotel

In 2020, a small group of Chinese who were holidaying in the north Thai city of Chang Mai for Chinese New Year. Due to the rise of covid, they were marooned there, with curfews, quarantines, and cancelled flights. There is a couple whose marriage is on the rocks, an almost-20-year-old woman who is pushing her mother to tell her who is her father, an older man who has a personal assistant, and a young man who is well-connected and finding flights (though they may be cancelled).

Covid is a looming actor that influences several situations. In one case, news reports on the radio about the virus appear increasingly dire, and the potential end of the world lets loose sexual inhibitions (both homosexual and heterosexual).

The acting and story is good, However, the story is not told in a linear fashion. The director tries to help by putting in chapter numbers, but the chapters do not guarantee that everything in each are from the same time period.

I saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival, with director Q+A. The director was actually marooned in Chang Mai, with fellow directors and actors. They did this film with whatever equipment and local crew they could scrounge up, shooting in 14 days, ending around the end of their 4-month mark of being marooned, just as flights started opening up. The all-Chinese cast was explained by the "local" being the descendant of the Chinese Kuomintang "Lost Army" - which is a historical fact.