Hotel Chevalier (2007)

A short prologue of one heartbreaking history of love and the prologue of the travel told in The Darjeeling Limited.

Director:

Wes Anderson

Writer:

Wes Anderson

Stars:

Jason Schwartzman, Natalie Portman, Waris Ahluwalia

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Jason Schwartzman	...	Jack Whitman
Natalie Portman	...	Jack's Girlfriend
Waris Ahluwalia	...	Security
Michel Castejon	...	Waiter

Storyline

Grief? Depression? Ambiguity in a Paris hotel room. Jack Whitman lies on a bed, ordering a grilled cheese sandwich from room service. His phone rings; it's a woman on her way to see him, a surprise. He readies the room, moving without affect, drawing a bath, changing his clothes. She arrives, as does the food, and the complications of their relationship emerge in bits and pieces. He invites her out on the balcony to see his view. Will they make love? Is the relationship over?

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Plot Keywords:

prologue | hotel | grilled cheese | balcony | view | 

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Genres:

Short | Drama | Music | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some language and sexual content

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA France

Language:

English French

Release Date:

26 October 2007 (USA)

Also Known As:

Part 1 of 'The Darjeeling Limited'

Filming Locations:

Hotel Raphaël, Paris, France

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fox Searchlight Pictures, American Empirical Pictures, Première Heure

Technical Specs

Runtime:

13 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

According to director Wes Anderson, the movie was filmed in two and a half days. The film was also edited entirely on his personal computer.

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Quotes

Ex-girlfriend: If we fuck I'm gonna feel like shit tomorrow.
Jack: That's okay with me.

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Connections

Features Stalag 17 (1953)

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Soundtracks

"Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte - for Piano"
Written by Maurice Ravel
Performed by Pascal Rogé
Courtesy of Decca Music Group Limited
Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User Reviews

like a quick little short story, as Anderson puts it, the emotional subtleties make it work so well

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.