A tantalizing taste of 'Darjeeling' - As an introduction to the road comedy, director Wes Anderson is unspooling the short, sexy 'Hotel Chevalier.'

As he envisaged it, "Chevalier" would play out like a piece of short fiction while "Darjeeling" would unspool like a novel. "I like short stories," Anderson said by phone from Paris. "I like the form. And I liked the idea of a short film as a companion piece to a movie."

In fact, he shot "Chevalier" in late 2005 -- around the time he had begun drafting the "Darjeeling" screenplay with Jason Schwartzman and his cousin Roman Coppola and nearly a year before that movie went into production -- making the shorter film a kind of working draft for the feature.

In both, Schwartzman plays the same lovelorn American abroad character, Jack Whitman. He is the youngest of three estranged brothers who set off on a familial bonding odyssey through India in "Darjeeling" (in which his celluloid siblings are played by Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson). And in "Chevalier," whose action takes place in Paris two weeks before "Darjeeling" unfolds, the character is working through some relationship rough spots with his on-again, off-again girlfriend -- namely, her sexual infidelity and mysterious bruises.

Recalling the low-key esprit de corps that prevailed during production, Anderson likes to emphasize the no-frills approach it took to get the job done. Production consisted of just two actors, a few borrowed props and two days' filming in a hotel room.

"I was financing it myself, so there was no money to raise," said Anderson. "We got a little crew together -- 15 people -- and shot quickly. We dressed it with stuff from my apartment. It was like making a student film."

Of course, not just any student production can land actors such as Oscar nominee Natalie Portman -- doing her first nude love scene for "Chevalier," to the scurrilous delight of fan boys worldwide -- and Schwartzman, the star of Anderson's cultishly popular second feature, "Rushmore." Nor could most student auteurs afford to shoot in expensive Panavision film stock on location in a sumptuous hotel suite in the City of Light. And for that matter, few aspiring Roger Cormans could land such pricey visual touchstones as whimsical handmade luggage by Louis Vuitton and wardrobe courtesy of Marc Jacobs -- especially not for a small passion project shot, essentially, on a whim.