Midnight in Paris
Angelika Film Centre, June 22, 2011
Movie #35 for 2011
Ever get nostalgic for Paris in the 20s? Gil (OWEN WILSON) does. Specifically for all the ex-pat American writers partaking of Hemingway’s ‘moveable feast’ of creativity and freedom. He’s in Paris on holiday from his hack Hollywood screenwriter job with his spoiled, heiress fiancé (RACHAEL McADAMS, Morning Glory, pictured with Wilson) and her parents. He’s struggling to write his first novel, wants to move to Paris rather than Malibu and is questioning his upcoming marriage - his creative crisis and his life crisis are all wrapped up together.
Then he stumbles into the time he’s so enamored with and meets up with that circle of artists - Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gretrude Stein, Picasso, Dali, Cole Porter, Luis Bunuel, Man Ray and many, many more. Gertrude Stein’s writing tips solve his creative crisis, but his life crisis gets even more complicated when he meets Adriana (MARION COTILLARD, Inception, La Vie en Rose) the beautiful young mistress of several of the artists.
There are touches of real movie-making genius, but they are writer/director WOODY ALLEN’s staple approach - long scenes shot in one take and energetic, realistic conversation. I also liked the refreshing way that Allen handled the transition from the present to ye olde Paris - there is no CG effects and no swelling violin or tinkling chimes to indicate wonder and amazement, just Owen Wilson’s realistic bewilderment and excitement.
Disappointingly, the women characters - the fiancé and the potential girlfriend - are less well drawn than you can usually expect from Allen. In fact, all of the bit parts are unusually bitsy. And there are a LOT of bit parts among the creative types. Allen writes them as imaginative caricatures rather than actual characters. Standouts are KATHY BATES (Misery) as Gertrude Stein and ADRIAN BRODY (Splice, Predators) as Dali because she plays it so straight and he’s so over the top.
For a film about the inadequacies of nostalgia, it’s actually quite sweetly nostalgic for a time when writers were writers and the creative lifestyle was all-consuming, drink-sodden fun. For a whimsical look at the great 20th century writers in Paris, I prefer Jason’s comic The Left Bank Gang (in which Hemingway, Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Ezra Pound rob a bank), but Midnight in Paris was fun too.
