Midnight in Paris
★★★★
(2011)
Woody Allen’s latest harks back to the prolific legend’s more fantastical fare of the mid 1980’s by putting Owen Wilson in 1940’s Paris, wandering the streets and night clubs with Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Pablo Picasso to name but a few. It’s another opportunity for Allen to push his love for his own heroes and cities in your face and though uneven in almost every way there is something very charming and loveable about this easy, breezy comedy.
Wilson plays Gill, a Hollywood writer at odds with his profession. On a trip to Paris with his wife Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her horrible parents, Gill reaches the end of his tether and begins to obsess over finishing his first novel, an effort to turn his back on his shallow career. Wrapped up in the notion of nostalgia and it’s faults Allen invents a car which picks up Gill on one of many midnight strolls and off he goes into the past which he, much like Allen, places far more importance on than the time he lives in. Its there that he can realise the faults in his novel (about the owner of a nostalgia shop) and in his own life and personality.
Wilson gives another quiet winning performance as Gill and McAdams is a great cold bitch incarnate. The artistic support is grand also with Adrien Brody putting in a wonderful two minutes of screen time as Salvador Dali obsessed with Rhinoceroses, Marion Cotillard is instantly lovable as Gill’s temptation Adriana and the list goes on. Micheal Sheen, Tom Hiddleson, Corey Stoll just keep adding sweetness and heart to this, one of Allen’s most lovely non cynical films of his career.
Midnight in Paris is yet another love letter to a city close to Allen’s heart, the films wonderful introduction mirroring Manhattan’s as without the doubting confused voice over. It paints the city and its life as a character even before a line has been spoken. It’s certainly the directors most romantic film in a long time and I think, one of his best. His critical failures are usually big and this he seems intent on using Midnight in Paris in convincing us that he could still make a Purple Rose of Cairo if he wanted too, though of course if nostalgia is folly as the film suggests then why would he have to even try.
