Hotel Chevalier

"Hotel Chevalier" is a short film written and directed Wes Anderson. I have watched "Moonrise Kingdom" by Wes Anderson which I loved, so I was interested to see the film would be like. This film acts as a prologue to "The Darjeeling Limited."

The film is set in a hotel in Paris. This setting is quite dislocating to begin with, because a hotel suggests you are not in your home town/ city. Our first view of our protagonist is of his feet and legs as he lies on the bed. We initially see more of the hotel room than we see of him.

The man gets a phone call from a woman whose voice he recognises. Their relationship shows signs of dislocation even before we have met the owner of the voice, due to the conversation they have. The man says the woman should not be here, despite this, he relents and gives her his room number.

The shot of the man taking up very little space on the huge double bed helps to emphasise his loneliness, and could even suggest to the viewer that he was hoping for the woman to show up. (Because he has clearly no need for a double bed otherwise!)

The music used is Parisienne and although the temp of it is quite jolly, the lyrics show a sense of longing. The way in which the man continually plays it at different intervals during the evening could maybe suggest that these are feelings that just won’t go away.

There is a sense of role reversal in this film, as exhibited by the characters actions. The woman presents the man with a bouquet of flowers and she leans in to kiss him, while he embraces her instead. He seems more in love with her than she with him, which is interesting to see in a film because typical Hollywood chick flicks generally have it the other way round.

The camera movement in this helped to convey the distance between the “couple”. The way it pans from one room to the next and focuses on a bit of action there creates quite a disconnecting feel- they are together in the same hotel room, but they have a lot of emotional distance between them.

Yet although the couple seem at most times to be quite emotionally apart, there are instances of synchronicity in their actions, for example when they both lie down and jolt back up at the same time. This gives the audience an idea of what their relationship may have been like before whatever happened between them happened.

Anderson also uses slow motion at the end of the film when they go out into the balcony which I really liked because along with the soaring soundtrack, makes such a simple action- walking from the hotel room to balcony more theatrical and have more meaning.

The man furtively looks around which demonstrates that he knows he shouldn’t be with the woman.