Mrs Blanche, the family matriarch who founded the place, has been dead for a year, but her oppressive presence is still felt in every crumbling crevice of the old pile. When Kath (Toni Collette) returns to the hotel in the hope of reviving her relationship with hotel cook Ronald Blanche (Daniel Craig), she spreads chaos in her wake.

A very dark, very stylised comedy, Hotel Splendide is not at all in the tradition of British social realism. The hotel is an almost physical embodiment of the dreaded Mrs Blanche ­ a vast, creaky edifice which entraps staff and guests alike.

In designing it, the film-makers were inspired in equal measure by "the Eastern European meld of the hydro spa mixed with the awful 1950s Health And Efficiency look" and by Gothic folk tales.

"In a way the whole place is like a decaying womb that everyone is hanging on to," suggests writer-director Terence Gross of his first full-length feature. "The whole film is a metaphor for the way the British settle for less and feel that mediocrity is better than risk."

Geoffrey Macnab