On Thursday night I was very lucky to go to the closing night gala of the BFI London Film Festival, red carpets and film stars aside this was all about Wes Anderson’s latest film The Darjeeling Limited.

The film tells the story of a spritual journey across India by train undertaken by three brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Scwartzman). They have not spoken for the last year since their father’s death, the trip is planned to allow them to reconnect with each other, to be brothers once again. Without saying too much the trip doesn’t quite go as planned and events unfold to take them on a new journey.

The film was preceded and will be when it’s released later this month by Hotel Chevalier, an entertaining short where Jack, the youngest brother and his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) are reunited in a hotel room in Paris prior to his trip to India. Whilst it isn’t essential viewing before TDL, it introduces you to a heartbroken Jack and allows you gauge the temperature of what is to come.

So for the main attraction, it goes without saying this film is beautiful to look at, the exposure of the indian landscape and culture reinforces it’s place on my list of countries to visit. The sound track is fittingly quirky and at times perfectly introduced by Jack with the assistance of his bose iPod speakers. The deadpan chemistry between the brothers will keep you engaged from start to finish and you will love the 11 piece family crested luggage, Francis’s control freak personailty and the prescription drug abuse. As much as I wanted to love this film completely it doesn’t quite pack a loveable punch for me. For sure it’s a great film to see on the big screen and I would recommend you to do so, although you may come away like me wanting a little more from it.

This entry was posted by Dom on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 10:56 am and is filed under Film, review . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.