Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 3 Review: Hotel Reverie

Warning: contains spoilers for Black Mirror season 7 episode 2 “Hotel Reverie”

When season three’s “San Junipero” came out in 2016, it made a splash. Acerbic, cynical Black Mirror – a series in which a man had sex with a pig, a child killer was tortured for public entertainment, and the Christmas special featured a five year old freezing to death in the snow – was capable of… romance? Its famously caustic creator Charlie Brooker, a writer of twists so funny and dark that his show was synonymous with the nastiest of misanthropic surprises, could also do… beauty? 

Yes, romance. Yes, beauty. And how. 

Then, Black Mirror held off. For almost a decade, it delivered stories that ranged around genres and played with sometimes letting its characters win, but in terms of romance and beauty, there was nothing to rival “San Junipero”. Until now. 

“Hotel Reverie” is hands-down the most beautiful-looking episode Black Mirror has ever made. An homage to classic black-and-white cinema, its aesthetic is first expertly reproduced, and then enhanced by the addition of director Haolu Wang and her team’s own imaginative bursts. It’s romantic, it’s funny, and thanks to a stellar performance from Emma Corrin channelling the buttoned-up passion of 1940s leading ladies, it’s also very moving. 

The second longest episode in season seven, “Hotel Reverie” takes 77 minutes to tell its story, which is really several stories fitted Matryoshka Doll-style inside one another. On the outer edge is Brandy Friday (Issa Rae), a modern-day Hollywood actor frustrated at being relegated to roles as sexy sidekicks to “one of the Ryans” or, as she describes it, lead parts in “Sundance misery porn”. They both put her in the same box, says Brandy, and she wants more. Ironically, Brandy finds more inside a box, or more properly, inside the “redream” computer system. 

Head of classic British filmmakers Keyworth Studios, Judith Keyworth (Harriet Walter) is also frustrated. Despite its vaunted reputation in her father’s time, the studio is struggling to survive in the modern day. When producer Kimmy (Awkwafina) offers to remake Hotel Reverie, one of Keyworth’s most famous titles, using new tech to replace the lead with a current star, Judith goes for it. Redream drops an actor’s consciousness into a fully functioning digital scan of the movie and lets them act it out in real time. After it’s turned down by the Ryans, the gender-swapped part goes to Brandy.

Inside the redream system, comedically, things don’t go as planned. Rae clowns endearingly as Brandy improvises and changes the script, which sparks changes in her digital co-star “Clara” – the character played by 1940s actor Dorothy Chambers, in reality a closeted lesbian plagued by press gossip and loneliness, and who went on to take her own life. Tech shenanigans blend Dorothy with Clara, who shares intense sexual chemistry with Brandy. When the whole system fails, the pair spend what feels to them like months but is actually minutes, falling in love. Then, horror strikes and Hotel Reverie swaps genre from charming romance to tragic love story – one that the studio floor becomes a cinema audience for, swooning at the romance and welling up at the tragedy.

It’s a visually stunning episode with a sophisticated story that has shades of The Purple Rose of Cairo, The Artist and other modern homages to black and white cinematic classics. It’s filled with memorable images, such as the movie cast being frozen in time while Brandy and Clara pose them like mannequins, or Clara pushing through the set wall and standing alone in a black void. There are good gags too, like the travel sickness disorientation of experiencing movie montage edits in real time, or the mission control updates from the studio floor (“romantic interest rising”, “dead dog confirmed, I repeat, dead dog confirmed”) and panic to resolve real-time plot holes. The fake film itself is gloriously plausible, from its setting, to its characters to that Casablanca-like famous last line. 

The real revelation though is Emma Corrin as Clara/Dorothy. It’s a studied performance but one that goes far beyond pastiche. Corrin’s mannered 1940s-style delivery and mannerisms are pure Celia Johnson (not to mention the tailoring), but her sadness and bewilderment and attraction to Brandy are all her own. Rae is funny and heroic as Brandy, but as Clara, Corrin will break your heart. 

As might the ending (is it a retread of the disappointing “bury your gays” trope if your gays are digital copies of long-dead people?), which sees Clara reset like a video game character from a save point before her sentience and relationship with Brandy. An echo, or a seed, of their love appears to remain though, as Clara chooses to save Brandy’s life with her final sacrifice. 

Clara’s death means that we’ll never know if Brandy would have chosen to forgo the real world so they could stay in their reverie forever, but that would have been the happier ending. A coda, in which a real-world Brandy is sent a parcel (with a return address of “San Junipero Drive”) containing tech that allows her to speak to an AI Dorothy on the telephone, is a clever callback that’s romantic but bittersweet. A phone call is better than nothing, but the two women are still apart. Can the love between “a computer person” and a digital consciousness even be considered real? Maybe this gorgeous episode is more Black Mirror episode than it looks.

All six episodes of Black Mirror season seven are streaming now on Netflix. 

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