White Hotel | Film Review | Slant Magazine

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

White Hotel ***

by Ed Gonzalez on October 1, 2001 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

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The journey that documentary filmmakers Dianne Griffin and Tobi Solvang make through a once war-torn Eritrea exposes how tradition, lack of education and financial instability is inextricably bound to Africa's AIDS crisis. In 1993, Griffin and Solvang arrived in Eritrea, unfamiliar with the country's burgeoning freedom after 30 years of Ethiopian rule. While staying at the White Hotel (a stoic, quasi-colonialist abode for reporters), the women encounter resistance from uncooperative health officials. As a consequence, White Hotel becomes less a documentary on the African AIDS crisis than it does a "making of" treatise that blurs the lines of journalistic objectivity. Norway's support of Eritrea during its war with Ethiopia works to the filmmaker's advantage. Griffin is part Norwegian and was forced to speak the language when she was a child. Griffin's memories of her recently deceased father serve as the film's self-involved narration, which nearly undermines the power of the documentary. When a doctor recalls the tale of his war torture and how he forgave his torturer via a bag of oranges, Griffin recalls a childhood memory involving orange juice. These obvious associations between Eritrean plight and Griffin's childhood are incredibly shrill. More effective is Solvang's narration; though she's more than concerned with exposing the miseducation of Eritrean people when it comes to AIDS, she has unprotected sex with her guide, who later reveals that he has gonorrhea. As unrelenting and brave as Griffin and Solvang's deconstruction of Eritrean traditions may be, even more effective is the studied way the women correlate Africa's political naivete with its health crisis. With Eritrean freedom came the notion that citizens were entitled to all the trappings of a working democracy. Griffin and Solvang understand that it's impossible to blame any one cause for the country's health problems. Since sex is never discussed openly in Eritrea, shame is the biggest hurdle preventing the practice of safe sex.

Director(s): Dianne Griffin, Tobi Solvang
Distributor: Sub Rosa Studios
Runtime: 90 min.
Rating: NR
Year: 1996