Hotel Chevalier

Writing about Hotel Chevalier as a stand-alone entity seems rather redundant, given that it has such a bearing on The Darjeeling Limited, which it preceded at the New York Film Festival, although this will not be the case at all screenings, according to director Wes Anderson, which is odd, since there are key facts revealed in this short that echo throughout the main piece.

It concerns Jack (Jason Schwartzman), a man in a hotel room. Lounging about in his dressing gown, watching Stallag 17, he receives a phone call. It's Her. And She brings the weight of their History. She's coming. Right now. He has half an hour. Just enough time to run a bath and set his Ipod to stun, courtesy of Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To My Lovely? Then She arrives, in the guise of Natalie Portman, looking decidedly underfed. Relationship stuff happens, some of which is amusing and some vaguely erotic.

It's certainly a rare treat to get such good production values in a short film. Colours and style ooze from the screen and, as a prelude to the main action, it works well.

"What the fuck is going on?" asks Natalie, pertinently, and the audience joins in the chorus. Oddly, it is more like a coda than an overture, but perhaps that is the point. Either way, as a stand-alone film, without the prop of its "big brother," Hotel Chevalier teeters on the brink of so what?