Hotel Chevalier (2007)
There is something a little strange about rating a thirteen-minute short film the same way you would rate a feature. What are you even measuring? Hotel Chevalier runs barely long enough to justify making a cup of tea, and yet here I am, genuinely glad I spent time with it. That ought to tell you something.
Wes Anderson made and self-financed this as a companion piece to The Darjeeling Limited, releasing it separately before the feature arrived. It is, in practice, a missing first chapter: a single scene set in a golden Paris hotel room, in which Jack Whitman, one of the three brothers from the main film, is interrupted by an unexpected visit from a former lover. That is your lot. No plot, no arc to speak of. Just a room, two people, a prickly and loaded silence between them, and that immaculate, melancholy Anderson light draped over everything.
On its own terms, it is slight. I will not dress that up. If you stumbled into it with no knowledge of The Darjeeling Limited, you might admire the craft, enjoy the mood, and then quietly wonder what the point was. But as a key to the feature, it is quietly illuminating in a way I did not expect. You come away understanding Jason Schwartzman's Jack so much better than the feature alone ever manages. His wounded, guarded romanticism, the way he keeps people at arm's length while clearly aching for connection, it all makes more sense once you have seen this scene play out. I found myself genuinely wishing Anderson had folded at least a piece of it into the film proper, because the character deepens considerably with it in place.
Schwartzman is good, comfortable in a role he knows well. But it is Natalie Portman who really catches the eye. She brings something sharp and unresolved to her former lover, a quality that keeps you from ever quite reading her intentions, and the chemistry between the two of them is real and prickly in exactly the right way. She is as good here as she is in something like Black Swan, working in miniature but with real precision. It is the kind of performance that makes you remember how good she can be when she is given something to actually do.
And then there is the song. I will leave you to discover it, but Anderson drapes it across the film at exactly the right moment, and it lands. That is the word. It just lands. It is the kind of musical choice that feels so obvious in retrospect you cannot imagine it any other way, which is usually the mark of a good one.
So, three stars, though I hold that lightly. Scoring a short as if it were a feature always feels slightly absurd, and this one especially so, because its value is almost entirely relational. Taken in isolation it is a mood and a moment more than a complete piece of work. Taken as what it actually is, a grace note to a film I enjoyed, something that quietly enriches it in hindsight, it works beautifully. If you have seen The Darjeeling Limited and skipped this, go back. If you are about to watch the feature for the first time, watch this first, the way Anderson intended. Either way, it will only cost you thirteen minutes, and they are thirteen well-spent ones.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2026-08-28
Where to watch
Watch in the US
Stream: Criterion Channel
Physical: Amazon US
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