In our weekly series Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sex scenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Wes Anderson films a scene with A-lister Natalie Portman nuden, then tucks it away in the short film Hotel Chevalier.
If most directors managed to secure the participation of an A-list star for their film that required nudity, they'd make it the centerpiece moment of their film. Wes Anderson isn't most directors, however. As time has gone on, Anderson has found himself more interested in fastidious production design and less interested in characters beyond what funny hyphenated name they have and what out-of-fashion style of mustache they're going to wear. 2007's The Darjeeling Limited was perhaps his final live action film based more around characters than incidents, and Anderson even shot a short film titled Hotel Chevalier that was made available online prior to the film's theatrical release.
Several weeks into the film's theatrical run, as it began expanding into wider release, the short was attached to the front of the film, but it remains something of an odd curiosity. A prequel for one of Darjeeling's three protagonists, Jason Schwartzman's Jack Whitman, whose backstory isn't really explored in the film. In fact, Hotel Chevalier only works properly in conjunction with the feature if shown immediately prior, thanks to a payoff in the film to a joke set up in the short.
Perhaps the oddest thing about Hotel Chevalier is that it's mostly a two-hander between Schwartzman and Natalie Portman, who is only glimpsed momentarily in the feature. The entire meat of her character is in the short film, as is her nude scene, a true rarity for the actress at this point in her career. Portman had allegedly shot a topless scene for Mike Nichols' Closer in 2004, but later tearfully requested he cut the scene. She had accidental nudity in 2005's V for Vendetta and briefly bared her buns for Miloš Forman's Goya's Ghostsin 2006, but didn't seem like the type of actress hungry for roles that required nudity.
Maybe that's what made the prospect of doing nudity for Anderson's short film, rather than the feature film, so enticing to Portman. In September, 2007, when the short was released on iTunes, the internet wasn't the dominant force that it is now. YouTube was still in its relative infancy and the notion of viral videos was but a small phenomenon. Portman may have figured that the short would be seen by a select few people online and then pop up as a bonus feature on the DVD release. Much better to go nude under those circumstances than in a film going onto 2500 screens.
This is pure speculation on my part, but it seems curious because Anderson's not exactly known for having a lot of nudity in his films. 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums and 2004's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou both feature topless scenes, and 2012's lackluster Moonrise Kingdom has brief left breast from Frances McDormand, but that's it for female nudity in his filmography. It's such an odd pairing of actress, nude scene, and placement of that nude scene outside the main feature.
Hotel Chevaliercenters around Schwartzman's Jack, just before joining his brothers on the train where we meet them at the beginning of The Darjeeling Limited. He has been holed up in the titular French hotel for over a month, recuperating from a horrible break-up with Portman's unnamed character, who happens to be in Paris on a layover and seeks him out. She comes to his room and as they converse and she eventually undresses, we see that she is bruised, obviously not by Jack if they haven't seen each other in more than a month...
It's sexy and sad all at once, which is about as sexy as any Wes Anderson movie could ever really be. He divorces nudity from sexuality in the way many European filmmakers do, proving once again that his sensibilities are more in line with European cinema of the 1960s than they are with modern cinematic endeavors. Later in the 13-minute short, we get a brief look at Portman'sbreasts on the bed, plus another look at her buns in one of Anderson's slow motion moving tableaux vivant at the end of the piece as Jack takes his best girl out onto the balcony to show her the view...
Portman turns up in the main feature in a wordless cameo near the end, and in case you were curious, the joke set-up here and paid off in the feature revolves around Jack's "gettin' down" song, the appropriately dour"Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?" by Peter Sarstedt—sorry guys, it's not the No Mercy song. If you have the occasion, watching the films in that order—Chevalier then Darjeeling—makes both more rewarding. Hell, the full title is Hotel Chevalier (Part One). Kinda spells things out a bit.
Like everything else Anderson does, Portman's nude scene resides in this curiosity of fastidiously designed artsy filmmaking with narrow appeal. Perhaps that's where Portman feels most comfortable to do these sorts of scenes, though that doesn't explain her nudity in the 2011 big box studio comedy No Strings Attached. I'm left with more questions than answers. I suppose that elusiveness is what makes Natalie Portman so magnetic in the first place.
TheDarjeeling Limited, with Hotel Chevalier,is available onDVD/Blu-ray via The Criterion Collectionandstreaming onvarious streaming sites
Catch up withsome other editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...
—Rosario Dawson Laid Bare for Danny Boyle'sTrance
—Katie Holmes MakesThe GiftWorth Remembering
—Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot
Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
