The Darjeeling Limited

Wes Anderson's film is a funny and touching tale of sibling bonding, writes Michael Dwyer.

THERE are many twists and surprises along the way in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, named after the train providing a passage through India for three Americans, estranged brothers attempting a bonding exercise a year after they last met at their father's funeral. They travel with an impractical number of distinctive, matching monogrammed suitcases (designed by Louis Vuitton), which are symbolic of all the personal baggage they bring with them.

Owen Wilson plays Francis Whitman, the brother who organises the trip and whose head is heavily bandaged after a motorcycle accident. Francis is such a control freak that he orders meals and drinks for his brothers and has an assistant who presents them with laminated, precisely detailed daily schedules.

Adrian Brody is cast as Peter, who claims to have been his father's favourite son. The fatalist among them, Peter fears, for no good reason, that his marriage will end in divorce and is now worrying about the imminent birth of his first child. Jason Schwartzman, who collaborated with Anderson and Roman Coppola on the screenplay, plays Jack, the youngest, a writer who blatantly borrows from the experiences of his family for his short stories.

In outline, the story recalls John Cassavetes's Husbands (1970), in which three American men are temporarily freed of their personal and professional ties while on a trip to London for the funeral of a friend. Here, sibling rivalries resurface as the brothers are alone together again. In their individual fears of adult responsibilities and commitments, it seems they have never fully grown up.

Deceptively simple and consistently engaging, The Darjeeling Limited is the fifth feature film from writer-director Anderson, and his warmest, most mature movie to date. That is not to say that he has abandoned his penchant for eccentric humour, with which the film is replete, but it is simultaneously melancholy and bittersweet, and at a key point, emotionally jolting.

The eclectic and effective soundtrack blends music from the Indian movies of Satyajit Ray and the Merchant Ivory team with 1960s pop songs: Play With Fire by The Rolling Stones over a resonant montage sequence, and three from The Kinks.

Showing in cinemas as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited is Anderson's 13-minute film, Hotel Chevalier, set in a Paris hotel room where Jack Whitman (Schwartzman again) has a reunion with his ex-lover (Natalie Portman). Don't be late.