Hotel Splendide

Synopsis

In spite of a cast list boasting Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartlidge and Stephen Tompkinson, the real star of Hotel Splendide is the hotel itself. Director Terence Gross and his team spent more than a year searching for the perfect location. They finally found it in the Slieve Donard Hotel in Northern Ireland. "It had all the qualities we were looking for - a fairy tale element, a hint of gothic and was overwhelmingly big to dwarf the staff and guests," says producer Ildiko Kemeny.



Gross sees the Hotel Splendide as embodying the spirit of Mrs Blanche, the late matriarch of the family who still manages the crumbling establishment. "She created a very ingenious heating system that runs off human waste. After her death she has had herself cremated into it and has a kind of presence in the hotel," explains Gross. "It's very Oedipal, with the children still living inside her."



Although the film has what Cartlidge describes as "a European sniff about it" ("it's very unusual for a British film to veer away from naturalism," she says) Gross sees it as carrying a very British message. "The whole film is a metaphor for the way the British settle for less and feel that mediocrity is better than risk," he says. But if that sounds portentous, it is also leavened with an essentially British sense of humour, as outsider Kath (Collette) brings liberating chaos into the suffocating environment of the hotel.



The film, which is Gross's feature debut, was selected for this year's Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section.

Details

Year

2000

Type of film

Features

Director

Terence Gross

Music

Mark Tschanz.

Dir

Terence Gross.

Exec prod

Robert Buckler.

Co-exec prod

Charles Gassot.

Prod

Ildiko Kemeny.

Scr

Terence Gross.

DoP

Gyula Pados.

Prod des

Alison Dominitz.

Ed

Michael Ellis.

Main cast

Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartlidge, Stephen Tompkinson, Hugh O’Conor, Helen McCrory, Peter Vaughan.

Budget

£3.2m.

Funding

FilmFour, Studio Canal.

Genre

Production status

Complete

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Last updated 24th June 2005