Hiya
Hotel Chevalier and The Darjeeling Limited premiere in Venice today and I’ll keep updating THIS update with reviews as they arrive.
Right now there is just one review, which praises Hotel and Natalie but is a bit cool on Darjeeling. Click here for the full scoop from Time.
The Darjeeling program includes a related 13-min. film, Hotel Chevalier. Schwartzman’s Jack seems uneasy when he gets a call from an ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) who insists on showing up in his swank hotel room. He draws a bubble bath for her. They flirt and parry and wind up in bed, exchanging dialogue that we hear again, at the end of Darjeeling, as part of a story Jack has written. It’s a beguiling vignette that, as Closer and My Blueberry Nights did, shows Portman as a comic actress in fresh bloom. I wish that she, and some of the feeling and wit of the short film, had been in the long one.
Thanks to Jenski.
UPDATE
Variety’s review is up and despite sounding like it was written by a robot, it’s more positive than the Time review. Here’s the Hotel Chevalier mention, which has important info about how we are going to get to see this sucker.
In Venice, pic screened with a nifty 13-minute short, “Hotel Chevalier,” identified in the end credits as “Part 1 of ‘The Darjeeling Limited.’ ” Completed in 2005, pic shows Jack and his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) in the titular Parisian hotel.
Short provides a potent prologue that further serves to make Jack the most sympathetic of the brothers and adds resonance to visual motifs that recur in the feature. Per Anderson, “Hotel Chevalier” will not be shown in theaters, but rather on the Internet, at festivals and on DVD.