While The Overlook Hotel and Bates Motel wear the cinematic crown when it comes to establishments that you’ll want to keep driving past on the highway, the unnamed hotel in Mr. K gives them a run for their money. In her fantastical feature film, Tallulah H. Schwab conjures up a fever dream hotel stay that would have Jack Torrance and Norman Bates scrambling for the exit — if only they could find it. Though it confuses theatrical setpieces for deep profundity, Mr. K works best when you submit to its frenzied, dream logic pleasures without attempting to make too much sense of it all.
Crispin Glover leads the picture as the titular Mr. K, a traveling magician making an overnight stop in an unnamed, vaguely European town. With an appointment the next morning at a local café where he hopes to book his next gig, all he needs is a good night’s sleep, but that’s the last thing he’ll get. Upon checking in to the dilapidated hotel, he discovers a large man under his bed, and a chambermaid hiding in the armoire. They both make a hasty escape, and Mr. K passes an uneasy night in his increasingly eerie room. Bright and early the next morning, he’s ready to leave, but can’t find his way back to the reception desk. In fact, he can hardly find his way off his own floor. The hotel has seemingly turned into a maze where all sense of direction has gone out the window. Doors that should open into rooms, open into closets. Turns of direction that should take him back to where he came from, lead somewhere else. Mr. K is literally caught in place that he can’t leave, but more worrying, it seems none of the residents seem to mind living in an M.C. Escher drawing.
It becomes clear to Mr. K that in order to find his way out, he’ll need to surrender himself to the hotel’s strange ways. The magician gets himself a job in the hotel kitchen (that is bizarrely focused on eggs), finds a friend in Anton (Jan Gunnar Roise), a fellow kitchen worker, and meets a number of oddball personalities including a famous artist (Sunnyi Melles) and a pair of dowagers (Fionnula Flanagan and Dearbhla Molloy). No one can really help him, or relate to his plight, but Mr. K hopes that in better understanding the — let’s just get it out of the way, Kafka-esque — experience he’s found himself in, that he can get out of it.
As folk jazz bands march the halls, an underground resistance grows, and the hotel reveals itself to be a living breathing organism of its own, it’s Glover’s terrific performance that holds it together. There’s a sensitivity he brings to Mr. K, a pain that plumbs more depth than Schwab’s script likely has on the page. Mr. K isn’t just trying to makes sense of the hotel, but it seems of himself too. It’s a reminder that Glover is a remarkable actor, and it’s a shame that Hollywood and the actor have a mutual disinterest in each other. Thankfully, Schwab brings out his best and the filmmaker owes much to Glover in giving the picture its shape.
However, while Glover’s work, along with the considered production and sound design that palpably brings the dilapidated, stained, yet vibrant hotel to life, Schwab’s screenplay remains elusive, allowing one to graft whatever meaning they like onto it. Is this film about purgatory? Perhaps it’s a commentary about being so attuned to life’s inconsequential details, you miss the bigger picture? Or maybe it’s about loneliness and what lies beyond the universe?
These themes all poke their head out but none quite stick. The film asks the viewer to bring their own understanding to Mr. K’s plight, but the picture is best experienced as a fantasia. It’s not often you’ll find a film that — despite owing much to The Shining and Psycho — also brings to mind pictures as wide-ranging as Alien and Oldboy. The deeper meanings behind it all may ring hollow, but feel free to fall down the zany rabbit hole and roam the hotel hallways with Mr. K with no particular destination in mind.
Director: Tallulah H. Schwab
Screenplay: Tallulah H. Schwab
Cast: Crispin Glover, Sunnyi Melles, Fionnula Flanagan, Bjørn Sundquist, Dearbhla Molloy, Barbara Sarafian, Jan Gunnar Røise, Esmée van Kampen, Sam Louwyck
Producers: Erik Glijnis, Leontine Petit, Dries Phlypo, Judy Tossell, Jan van der Zanden, Ineke Kanters
Cinematography: Frank Griebe
Production design: Maarten Piersma, Manolito Glas
Costume design: Charlotte Willems
Editing: Maarten Janssens
Music: Stijn Cole
Sound: Nils Viken, Bror Kristiansen
Production companies: Lemming Film (Netherlands), A Private View (Belgium), Take 1 (Norway), The Film Kitchen (Netherlands)
World sales: Level K
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In English
96 minutes
