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Hotel Chevalier

Hotel Chevalier (2007)

October. 26,2007
|
7.2
|
R
| Drama Romance

In a Paris hotel room, Jack Whitman lies on a bed. His phone rings; it's a woman on her way to see him, a surprise. She arrives and the complications of their relationship emerge in bits and pieces. Will they make love? Is their relationship over? (A prequel to The Darjeeling Limited, 2007.)

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AniInterview
2007/10/26

Sorry, this movie sucks

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Dirtylogy
2007/10/27

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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Arianna Moses
2007/10/28

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

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Kamila Bell
2007/10/29

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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Acantilado
2007/10/30

Since most people are only familiar with a limited number of Anderson's films, I will start by pointing out that this is not the quirky whimsical reverie that one sees in his better-known works. Here the film maker seems to take a turn towards more mature themes. The approach is still W.A. in that there are many of the elements from his previous cinematic sojourns: unwarranted humor, odd dialogue and silences, spatial unreliability, unexpected confessions...the visuals are also as spectacular as everywhere else on Wes' outings. Speaking of which, the fact that this is the only document which contains a much closer inspection of Natalie Portman's natural beauty makes this in and of itself a mouthwatering treasure of a film. I give this film an 8 (not a 10) only because it doesn't actually show all of Natalie at her peak, but what it does show is more than worth the 12+ minutes of your earthly time. We need that blooper reel, homes.

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MartinHafer
2007/10/31

I think most of Wes Anderson's films are products you either love or you hate. Many professional reviewers and lovers of art and indie films adore his movies, whereas the average Joe (or Josephine) probably wonders why anyone would pay to see these movies. To say that his films lack conventional plots is an understatement--and the same can be said about "Hotel Chevalier". This short features what seems like an out of context snippet--not enough to tell a story and not one where you know much about the characters. And, when it's over, you STILL are left wondering what it was all about. Some love this ambiguity--some can't stand it. As for me, I have enjoyed some of Anderson's quirky films quite a bit (such as "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Royal Tannenbaums") and hate thoroughly hated others (such as "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" and the film that this short precedes on the DVD--"The Darjeeling Limited". And, like the full length film, "The Darjeeling Limited", "Hotel Chevalier" lacks context and is tough to love. To me, it was just a snippet of a film involving two one-dimensional characters who meet in a hotel room to screw and not much more.

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MisterWhiplash
2007/11/01

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.

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Veritas_Lux_Mea
2007/11/02

This is a wonderful short film to introduce us to one of the main characters in Wes Anderson's film The Darjeeling Limited. A broken romance sends Jack (Jason Schwartzman) off to a Paris hotel to lick his wounds it seems. In this short the ex-girlfriend has arrived and Jack must come face to face with her and his pain. Pay very close attention as you watch this as I think it will pay off. Personally I found this to be a nice little gift from Anderson as we wait for the release of The Darjeeling Limited. I don't really understand the question about it appearing in theatres as part of the main film but I think it does a nice job revealing the characters a bit. I enjoyed it and it certainly is very much like Anderson's previous work. I know that many fans of Wes Anderson tend to be very thrown by each new film he creates and they tend to have a favorite that they won't stray from. I have never really understood this because I think his body of work is really quite consistent and he seems to improve with each film. The key to all of his films, at least to me, is that you feel that you have stepped in to each one and lived with the characters because he takes such care revealing their quirks to you. I think what causes the discord among his fans is that they feel so close to certain characters they have trouble letting go of them. So, we end up with passionate arguments about why Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, or The Royal Tenenbaums were "better" than The Life Aquatic.

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