Modern filmmakers seem to scorn the smaller canvas of the short film, which is a shame because beautiful things can be drawn in small, vivid detail. Some films simply don't warrant a feature, as The Darjeeling Limited exemplifies.
Hotel Chevalier is a prelude to that film, and it largely works because Anderson lays bare feelings that remain inscrutable, allows to blossom a sense of history and time past between the two lovers. In their small, intimate moments in a hotel room, I get the sense of a time that extends back and forward, that these people loved, were hurt or excited, elsewhere, in some other time, and this snapshot is all that remains.
This is memory, a sense of place and time. The flow of life suspended for a brief moment, where lives entire can fit.
Watching this also reminds me how much Anderson's original style, a subject of much celebration among his fans, is in fact Aki Kaurismaki.
