By turns fetid and febrile, pyretic and putrid, and all things hot and sticky, this unique avant garde work is the result of a collaboration between writer-director Stefan Lernous and his colleagues at Abattoir Fermé, a theatre company based in the Belgian Flemish-speaking city of Mechelen. It has a plot, of sorts: there’s a guy named Dave (Tom Vermeir, caked like everyone else in the film with white make-up that makes him look like a zombie) who looks after his family’s supposedly empty hotel, an elaborate set full of rooms encrusted with mould, grot and dead stuff, all of it in the process of mulching down into one sludgy, semi-organic mass. Perhaps the title is a clue that this is all taking place in some para-aquatic terrain, which would explain the abundance of tridents and fishtanks and other watery kit.
Anyway, Dave is not entirely alone; this soggy hell has other people in it. There is an unseen neighbour who is watching some extremely noisy porn with whom Dave communicates via shouts. A young woman named Nora (Anneke Sluiters) who insists on renting a room; another husky-voiced woman (Ruth Becquart) in fleshy pantyhose who complains that she’s bored with “fingerbanging” herself all day. Dave’s angry shouty mother (Tania Van der Sanden) is on hand, and Dave’s dead Aunt Lucy (Dirk Lavryssen) who seems to have died on a sofa some time ago, her altered state only noticed when Nora takes a closer look. Later, there are wild parties, autopsies in the kitchen, and a whole lifetime for Dave lived inside a glass case with a pretty strawberry blonde and a football team’s worth of ginger kids.
Perhaps Hotel Poseidon is meant to be someone’s nightmare or a diorama of Dave’s subconscious. But it really yields up very little in the way of actual meaning, and it was not entirely enjoyable to watch. But this film has a strange, incontrovertible integrity that demands and deserves admiration, especially for art director Sven Van Kuijk’s intricate design, and the crazy aural bricolage of screeching violins, echoes, dialogue and the sound of someone moving furniture that acts as a regular backbeat throughout.
• Hotel Poseidon is released on 3 January on Arrow.
