Created to be nothing but a short film meant to be seen prior to Wes Anderson's 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited, Hotel Chevalier serves as a glimpse into just one of the three characters of the film.
Hotel Chevalier tells us the story of a considerably wealthy writer cooped up in a beautiful hotel room in Paris. He's clearly living there alone, given the hotel room is messy and his character shows a fair amount of carelessness just from his body language.
With Jason Schwartzman as the unknown man, we see his troublesome, now former, relationship flourish with a confusing passion as his former partner arrives at the hotel to see him. The dialogue is personal, it's giving but not generous, and we learn that his former partner had clearly done something unforgivable; but their romance lingers on within the hotel.
Emotion is everything in this short, with the only song being Peter Sarstedt's ' Where Do You Go To My Lovely', with Anderson's famous tracking shots following the characters around the hotel room, establishing scenarios of passion, contempt, and even loneliness.
Hotel Chevalier is short, but it's filled with narrative, and the little amount of dialogue allows the viewer to really piece together just what is going on, and what has happened to the characters -- it perfectly sets up Schwartzman's character for The Darjeeling Limited, where additional hints to his personal life are mentioned.
While it's not exactly necessary to watch the short film before The Darjeeling Limited, I highly recommend doing so for the extra glimpse into the universe and characters that they envisioned for the film.
