Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates
Amy Leigh Richards
Midnight in Paris has enough name-dropping to make a Beverly Hills' cocktail party jealous. If A-movie actors such as Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, and Rachel McAdams aren’t enough, let’s also throw in some TV actors, a model/singer/First Lady of France, and oh yeah, that little-known movie legend Woody Allen as writer and director. But here we have a rare large-cast film in which the characters not only each make important contributions, but are, in general, more famous and important to the arts than the actor portraying them.
The story itself does not scream originality, I admit. Owen Wilson’s character Gil travels with his fiancée Inez and future in-laws to Paris. After running into Inez’s friends and getting verbally abused by Inez and her friends alike, Gil opts to wander the streets at night, alone with his thoughts and aspirations to become a true writer. In a wine-induced stupor (ah, France.) he stumbles upon a way to travel back to his dreamland: 1920s Paris. After a night of partying with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and eventually Ernest Hemingway, Gil is in heaven amidst his inspirations and idols and is determined to continue hopping between time periods. As Gil becomes more caught up in his “nightlife” he drifts further from his modern life and finds increasingly more reasons to stay in the 1920s, including the beautiful and effervescent Cotillard, and a future as a true novelist. Naturally, he must make a decision about where he belongs, and with whom, and in what era.
Anyone who has studied the French will enjoy the tongue-in-cheek commentary on French culture. Even more amusing than the French references, however, is the playful and creative portrayal of art’s celebrities. Corey Stoll does a fantastic Hemingway, who speaks with the brazen poignancy of the author and the rambling, disconnected, confusing sentence structure of his prose. Writing this movie must have been terribly fun, poking fun at artists, art, and the crazy ideas of the art world. Really, how often does Adrien Brody pop up as Salvador Dalí, spouting bizarre nonsense and reminding us why that surrealism unit in school was impossible to understand?
It’s always a refreshing feeling to leave the cinema remembering that movies can be an art form. Few films can accomplish this feeling, and even fewer include humour that art-lovers will enjoy.
Verdict: How appropriate that this work of the Septième Art is set in the magical city that calls to all of us with creativity in our souls.
Amy Leigh Richards is the enigmatic Lady that shared a falafel with me one eve in Brussels.
