Hotel De Love

There are some good elements in first time writer/director Craig Rosenberg’s romantic comedy but they are barely evident beneath the combined burden of wooden dialogue, unremarkable performances and one must hypothesize, lack of directorial verve, with scene after scene coming close to something like comedy before being squandered by a lack of imagination or spontaneity.

With UK actress, Saffron Burrows, as the principal female there is an evident attempt to appeal to the Four Weddings And A Funeral market although someone might have told the director that putting a pair of spectacles on a good-looking woman doesn’t turn her into a philosophy lecturer.

The desire to please too many people of course ends up pleasing, no one. the film, despite the wonderfully kitsch setting of the “Hotel De Love”, a getaway dedicated to newlyweds, being largely characterless. In this respect, Burrows and her co-stars, Aden Young, Simon Bossell and Pippa Grandison are of no help. Ray Barrett and Julia Blake are brought in to provide something for the older set but as with everything about this film, they are constrained by the patness of the script (it is a pleasant surprise, however, to see Julia Blake playing something other than a prim and proper matron).

Hotel De Love is the sort of film one can imagine being much better than it is and although one feels that there is a strong element confessional in it (aside from the confessional which features literally in the film) it would have benefited from the guidance of, if not Mike Newell, then a more experienced director .

 

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