Women's Work: Respect and Remoteness in Pete Gleeson's Hotel Coolgardie

Cases of men acting uncouthly towards women – especially when the latter are in service-industry roles – are unsurprising, but the pub featured in Hotel Coolgardie is a rarity, in that it hires female backpackers specifically for the titillation of its largely male clientele. While director Pete Gleeson's approach may have avoided didactic messages about misogyny, his film nevertheless captures how such chauvinism can breed in conservative outback settings, writes Lauren Carroll Harris.

Additional keywords: gender, sexism, masculinity, patriarchy, rural, parochialism, documentary, observational.