Hotell

Vikander goes on a little psychotic break after having an infant with complications. She takes her therapy group to a hotel and they try to be other people - which they find out doesn't work too well. Thankfully, she decides to return to her real life in the last 30 seconds of the film.

Oddball Swedish movie basically about a traumatized Alicia Vikander (her new born baby was born brain damaged) who attends group therapy and eventually takes the other 4 strangers from the group on a tour of hotels to find themselves apparantely. At times it is revolting and crude and some of the characters actions unrealistic and just not normal. But it is Swedish after all. There is scene where the group intermingle at a wedding at one of the hotels and Erika (Vikander) and Rikard take the small 8 year old son of one of the wedding guests back to the boys hotel room to see his toy collection, proceed to have a bath with him, half clothed and the parents come looking for the boy, find him and on the disgust and disbelief of the parents, Vikander smashes up the hotel room. Then nothing happens. They just walk out. No police. That sums up the movie weirdness.

6.5/10 ~March 3, 2017~

Erika (Alicia Vikander) has it all: a good job, lots of friends and a secure relationship with Oskar (Simon J. Berger). Until the day it all falls apart after the premature birth of her son. Suddenly this perfect life means nothing, and the feelings she once was able to control are no longer within reach. She starts going to group-therapy and meets other people suffering from various forms of trauma. Eventually she form a bond with some of the participants within this group; Rikard (David Dencik), who has severe mother issues and a fascination for Mayaindians, Pernilla (Anna Bjelkerud), a lonely middle-aged woman with an extensive self hatred, Ann-Sofi (Mira Eklund), a young woman suffering from bullying and abuse and Peter (Henrik Norlén) who has in reality a structured life with a wife and kids, but feels only emptiness and alienation. One day Erika and this eclectic group of four people decide to take matters into their own hands and heads off together in search of a way out. They start checking into hotels - a place of complete anonymity where one can wake up as a different person... "Hotell" concerns topics such as postpartum depression, abuse and selftherapy and has a dark structure with a comic sparkle that comes to life in several scenes. Director Lisa Langseth is balancing on the line between the gripping reality and goofball comedy when she wants to show the tragic comic balance within each character, but she manages to keep the balance act together. All the main actors go all in with their characters, they are all sad and reduced as humans, but yet so full of life. However, the lead actress Alicia Vikander is the one that stands out as the depressed Erika. She is vulnerable, beautiful, depressed, hurt, confused and in pain, but yet selfoccupied, cold and pitiful for not being there for her newborn son and boyfriend. Her facial expressions says so much and you can feel her pain through the screen. Her full on breakdown in the hotel room in the end is intense and moving. David Dencik is as well in good form as the Mayaindian loving man child, but Alicia Vikander stole my heart in this movie. She is already in Hollywood and with her talent and absolute beauty she will go really far in Tinseltown. Mark my words.

Has its moments but they are few and far between as this film struggles to switch between comedy and its more serious themes.

Alicia Vikander! Your expressive and fragile face portrays such an overwhelming range of emotion that you deserve to be called one of the best young stars working today. Hotell is surprisingly funny and offbeat and provides an enjoyable tale of healing. The idea of the hotel arises in a therapy session when Erika (Vikander) likens her depression to a story about a woman who saw life as a hotel, which allowed her to shed her skin and walk away from relationships and responsibilities while seeing life from various perspectives. It's one of those cases where, as Grand Hotel's Otternschlag might say, "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens." The vagabond way of picking up and walking away from one's troubles only provides temporary relief as Erika leads her peers on some ludicrous group exercises, which include medieval torture and anonymous sex. There is no escape from life's troubles, though, as the problems Erika and company face outside the hotel loom over their therapy follies like the cloud of depression the heroine can never seem to shake. It's a silly, messy affair rendered consistently watchable by the shaky Dogme-ish close-ups on Vikander's endlessly expressive face. Right after this film I also watched Blue Jasmine with one of my favorites Cate Blanchett and your performing is for sure in the same class as hers, if not even better!!

This young woman has a traumatic delivery and her new-born son must stay in hospital because of brain damages. She can't touch him, she can't even watch him, the situation in unbearable, so she ends up in this therapy group. The group takes into a hotel. There are victims of bullying, of being tortured by one's mother, of hating one's body. They start to heal themselves, bringing the past back like it ought to have been. The film sometimes almost goes into slapstick, but never loses it grip on the spectator. Good acting by everybody and not at least by Alicia Vikander, who has the most difficult part. Director Lisa Langseth has reached an international level and there may be an exciting artistic future ahead here.

I went without any expectations, but I think the one thing that stood out for me in this film is Alicia Vikander's acting. One of the first scenes of the movie, where her character completely loses control in the hospital is definitely the highlight of the film. You can relate to the frustration she has with herself after her pregnancy, and Alicia acts it out perfectly, never overdoing it in the scenes where her character is depression. The second half of the movie becomes a bit of mess where the movie doesn't become much about her but about the supporting cast... Which confused me for a while because isn't this film about Alicia's character and what she is going through instead of the characters around her and how they are healing? I think it would have helped if the movie closed off with a more solid ending, tying off question marks about her relationship with her boyfriend; that would have helped bring the middle third of the film back to Alicia and why she went on this hotel-hopping adventure in the first place.