"Hotel" by Mike FiggisWhile

"Hotel" is significantly different, it has similarities to "Time Code." It has four little screens on one screen, just like ?Time Code.? It makes good use of music: Skunk Annensie, which is appropriate to the film?s subject. And it has Salma Hayek, Burt Reynolds and David Schwimmer. Furthermore, there are Lucy Liu, Rhys Ifans and Julian Sands, making you think the director is certainly experimenting with casting.

Similar to filmmaker David Lynch?s ?Mulholland Drive,? "Hotel" fetishisizes the female, with shots of women?s legs in high heel shoes, presented as a secret answer to the mystery or as the film?s final message. The film focuses on secrets and on an unsolved mystery, still unclear at the end. It also features unreal, misty people. At first, it is very difficult to follow the story, creating suspense and anticipation. It is clear that Higgis wanted to experiment with the usual aesthetic and with the narrative borders of film.

Everything takes place in a Venice hotel, filled with mysterious and interesting characters. There are guests, an expensive prostitute who lives in the hotel for the special services, and a film crew team with a hard-headed British film director. He dies and re-appears again with no explanation. Than we have a tour guide, an English actor with a double life, a bellhop who has all the keys, a strange hotel staff and a murderer with the bizarre hobby of having sex before he kills.... All the time there is no apparent clue of what exactly is going on.

Venice, in this film, is a dark and blurry place with loads of secrets. Everything looks like one big messy theatre play from the 18th century with too many actors, performing different Shakespeare plays at the same time. No one knows what the hotel's tunnels hide, only for most welcome guests!