Hotel Chevalier

This was a beautiful little film that that plays out like one Truffaut's Antoine Donielle films. Not only is it the perfect prequel to (the wonderful) "The Darjeeling Limited", but it is a self-contained simple and moving story.

This whole "New Wave" feeling is a departure from Wes Anderson's usually theatrical and highly-stylized film making. It suits him well. Don't get me wrong, Rushmore is one of my favorite films and the Royal Tannenbaums is fantastic, but I am really digging this new naturalistic style Anderson is applying to his new films and cannot wait to see what he does next.

Shwartzman is a wonderful actor who never ceases to entertain. and Natalie Portman gives honest and touching performance.

In the version i've seen, Hotel Chevalier has been merely the prologue of The Darjeeling Limited. Although weird, the short movie (or intro, in my case) has been more potent than the movie.

Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman deliver a fine performance. He is an insecure not-so-young lad and she is a manipulative lady in search of something else.

As it usually is the case, such a relationship ends in one of the people involved getting hurt. And it is rarely that the insecure person has the guts to end it, usually the manipulative one moves on to the next prey. But you'll have to see The Darjeeling Limited to see how this love story ends.

Really a beautiful short piece of enticement, with tone and sight and sound and dialogue all letting you know that there's a story here, while only hinting at the many things that story might be. And it captures a particular feel that lets you in on the situation kind of like a good short story in a book does.

The way the whole thing looks, and the way the action comes across, are pure Wes Anderson at his best. Deadpan. Melancholy. Hurtfully truthful-feeling.

You know they say there used to be shorts before all the movies when you saw 'em in the theatre. Now we get a string of commercials bigger, louder, and stupider than on TV. It would be so cool if more top notch film-makers like these made more stuff like this. Viva Short Film.

And Thank You Especially, Miss Portman, for getting behind in your work.

Your talent and beauty are in a neck and neck race for first place in many hearts like my own.

I'll be there for "Darjeeling Ltd" the day it opens.

Hotel Chevalier is the kind of thing Wes Anderson could've written in his sleep- or for that matter written in his sleep while on the plane from the US to France to shoot in two days and edit on his computer. But in such a quick burst of minor creativity he has created a stark, amusing and tragic little situation that makes clearer (if not totally clear) the disconnect between Jack (Schwartzmann's character from Darjeeling Limited) and the 'ex-girlfriend' (Portman, with her V for Vendetta cut coming back in and her attitude like that of a pure b***ch). At first Jack has no idea she's coming, by the long pauses they have (albeit he asks why she pauses so long, when he paused longer), and orders a grilled cheese sandwich. She arrives. She brushes her teeth. She decides against going into a bath Jack's specially prepared- as in Darjeeling we see the obsessive-control side to the Whitman family via the IPOD machine playing the song- and instead they go into a very 'French' kind of torturous love scene.

It's erotic in what isn't shown; one might expect this to finally be *the* one, for skin-flick fans anyway, where Portman goes nude. She does, by the way, but tastefully in the Anderson sense- we're not getting the wacky nudity of the girl from Life Aquatic who never has a shirt on, or the lesbian girlfriend of Paltrow in that one shot in Tenenbaums. By the end, it doesn't make any grand statement about love or love in a hotel room or Paris, but in a self-contained way Anderson's created a mini-masterwork of emotional frustration in the midst of crazy lust. And, by a stroke of something of a quasi-in-joke, like one of the 'brilliant' short stories that the character Jack writes that are 'fictional' though never really at the same time.

Hotel Chevalier quickly charts the fallout of a complicated relationship in stylish and thoughtful fashion, it's absolutely not essential viewing for the Darjeeling Limited itself but has enough substance to match the gorgeous style making it a worthy addition.

Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman are great, in very limited screen time they establish a fiery chemistry with an engaging back and forth as they debate the future of their relationship, helped by dialogue that communicates so much with so few words.

Wes Anderson's direction is as flawless as ever. Its beautifully saturated and yellow in particular has rarely been this prominent or this good looking. All of the luscious visuals are complimented by his almost uncanny ability for perfectly timed needle drops.