A visit to Wes country

Slim with floppy hair, he is wearing a dapper, fox-toned corduroy suit which suggests he's all set for a method role in The Great Gatsby, right down to the limp cucumber-sandwich handshake. I prepare myself for a class act performance.

We're here to discuss The Darjeeling Limited, the 38-year-old auteur's latest movie about a dysfunctional family of three brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, who embark on a fantastical journey of sibling bonding and self-realisation on a train ride through India. It's certainly a (geographical) departure for Anderson, plus I've never known anyone not to gush about India. So I kick off with a simple but classic opener. Why India?

'I went there because I knew I wanted to work there,' Anderson says politely. The end. I can almost hear the full stop. Yes - and? 'And I was very interested in India.' Pause. 'And I wanted to learn about it.' The words 'teeth' and 'pulling' spring worryingly to mind.

Still, it's early days. You co-wrote The Darjeeling Limited on a train trip through Rajasthan with Schwartzman and his cousin Roman Coppola. Like the brothers in the movie, I prompt, you must have had lots of adventures?

'Well, you know, we had a different mission, because we were there to write. But we certainly put ourselves in the same settings,' he admits. Like? 'Well, we were particularly keen to participate in any rituals that we could. If we hadn't been there on this project, I think we'd have been too reserved to kinda crash these things. We often didn't really understand what was going on. But it's quite moving to participate in someone else's ritual because you're joining a lot of people who are interested in something bigger than themselves.

'In fact,' he suddenly offers, 'Roman, Jason and I would often make up our own rituals.' I perk up excitedly. Like what? 'Uh. Ummm.' Pause. Fiddles with cuff awkwardly. 'Ummm... I can't remember now.'

For a chap seemingly costumed for centre stage, Anderson is now oddly intent on blending into his beige hotel suite, offering up a swatch of the most politely colourless answers ever known to interviewer. It's partly about self-protection. Prying about Wilson's breakdown is clearly a conversational no-no - unlikely as it seems, the two have been friends since they studied philosophy at the University of Texas. It's also fruitless to hint that Anderson (middle of three brothers, incidentally) went to India on some personal mission to 'find himself' after the commercial and critical failure of 2004's The Life Aquatic.

The main criticism of that film, as it is to some extent of all Anderson's work, is that it's all self-consciously quirky aesthetic and no heart. Is Wes simply a case of the emperor's new clothes? Or is it that naturalism doesn't interest him?

'Sure, as an audience member,' he says in mild response. 'But look at Pedro Almodóvar, at the Coen Brothers. Those to me are good role models. They've just done what they want and their movies are very recognisable as their own. Frankly, in practically every Coen Brothers movie, somebody gets kidnapped, but nobody says: "How many kidnapping movies are you guys going to make?" They're just doing their own thing.'

Anderson's 'thing' is creating wonderful 'snow globe' movies that teem with a cornucopia of colourful details and selfishly eccentric characters and which led me to believe their creator would give an equally colourful interview.

But something more subtle is at work here. I realise Anderson is not so much shy or hostile as pathologically self-contained. So much so that, ex-public schoolboy polish aside, he finds it peculiarly unnatural to connect to the real world outside.

Initially, The Darjeeling Limited seems superficially to step outside his comfort zone in terms of its location. Until, that is, you clock that this isn't 'India' but another exotic location in Anderson country, this time contained within a train, rather than a boat (Aquatic), a house (Tenenbaums) or a school (Rushmore).

Anderson's next project, an animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr Fox, also sounds suspiciously familiar. 'I like the villains,' confesses Anderson. More revealingly, he adds: 'I like that a lot of it takes place underground. As a kid I was always building underground forts and things. And I like Mr Fox - there's something about him. He's kind of a dandy and he's vain. He's also quite weak in a way, but he's smart, you know?'

As he presses a final weak, wet cucumber sandwich into my palm, I think I know exactly what he means.

The Darjeeling Limited is out from Friday.