SansPoint

Wes Anderson^[1] is one of my favorite directors, and watching Hotel Chevalier, his new short film/prologue to the upcoming The Darjeeling Limited hits all but one of the right notes. It’s a standard Wes Anderson bit through and through, from the slightly desaturated colors, shots with near perfect lateral symmetry, detached dialog, and Futura titles. It’s 13 minutes of concentrated excellence, and has me pretty excited about Darjeeling Limited.

The short itself features Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), and Natalie Portman^[2] reuniting after a dismally failed romantic relationship, while Schwartzman hides in an expensive French hotel room. I’m not sure how it connects to the main attraction, but as a little dose of Wes Anderson, it’s excellent.

If it’s missing anything, it’s the requisite Mark Mothersbaugh score, but the music in it “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” by Peter Sarstedt suits it excellently.^[3] The film is available from iTunes for free, and I highly recommend it.

1. No relation ↩
2. I don’t know what it is, but this is the second Wes Anderson film that features an actress I have sexual interest in presented in a way that drives me batty. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson managed to do the same thing with Gwyneth Paltrow, who does not interest me at all. Her character Margot Tenenbaum, however, is bizarrely attractive. Cate Blanchette in The Life Aquatic, though didn’t work for me in that way. ↩
3. Mark’s apparently sitting Darjeeling Limited out, which is a shame. His scores are what got me interested in Wes Anderson to begin with. ↩