MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Gil and Inez are a modern young couple vacationing in Paris prior to their upcoming wedding. While Inez enjoys Paris to a point, Gil, a struggling novelist, is madly in love with this beautiful city. Inez enjoys trendy dance clubs, fancy restaurants, and private museum tours with her self-absorbed friends. Gil longs for the simple pleasures of walking through the boulevards, parks, and old shops, and if it rains, so much the better for Gil.

One night Gil has a wonderful stroll through an old Parisian neighborhood, but finds himself hopelessly lost. While sitting on church steps, he contemplates how to find his hotel. As the church clock chimes midnight, Gil is invited into an antique car which inexplicably slips back in time to the Paris of the roaring twenties. There he meets the great artists and writers of the day and before long Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein take a keen interest in his work. Gil easily returns to the Paris of his era, but he can go back in time by waiting at the church steps at midnight if he wishes to return to the twenties. While much of what happens is comfortably predictable, the story is full of surprises too.

The film is thoroughly enjoyable. An excellent ensemble vividly brings this story to life, but the most powerful character is Paris herself. Beautifully photographed in day and night, sunshine and rain, Paris through the ages develops her own intoxicating persona. Part comedy, part surreal dream, part romance, part philosophical treatise on art and existence, Midnight in Paris is first and foremost a love letter to a great city.

People of my generation may well appreciate the sustained shots of various Parisian scenes. The music of the period is excellent, and the story is irresistible. When telling a story that prominently features historical people of great accomplishment, one runs the risk of failing to reach the brilliance of the luminaries in the story. Happily, Midnight in Paris rises to the occasion and presents the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Cole Porter (to name a few) in a context that is on par with their greatness.

Incidentally, when writer/director Woody Allen doesn’t perform the lead role in his films, I get a big kick out of the actors playing the Woody Allen character. Larry David was a natural choice in Whatever Works. In Vicki, Cristina, Barcelona, Scarlett Johansson transformed the Woody Allen character from a nebbishly neurotic man to an exquisitely feminine, neurotic woman. Owen Wilson, takes the Woody Allen character in Midnight in Paris to new heights. He captures the neurosis, but adds leading man gravitas mixed with a very human vulnerability. He may not be as funny as Woody Allen, (nor as excessively gorgeous as Scarlett Johansson for that matter), but he is funny enough, handsome enough and adds a layer of plausibility and authenticity that anchors the fantastical aspects of the film.

In a time when Hollywood churns out films with the goal to be the top grossing film on opening weekend, Midnight in Paris is a refreshing alternative that reminds us of the great movies of the past as well as a magnificent Paris from the past.

Be that as it may, is Midnight in Paris appropriate for your Brownie Daughter? While there is not a single utterance of foul language, nor a single frame of explicit sex, frank, polite conversation regarding sex is peppered throughout the film. A stroll past a winsome line-up from the demimondaine may stimulate an unwanted comment or question. Other than that, your real concern is boring your daughter to death. Unless your daughter has a familiarity with if not interest in the likes of Cole Porter, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dali, etc., or a highly developed attention span, or a strong affinity with Paris, she will hate the film and hate you for forcing her to watch it. Why not take away her cell phone while you’re at it, and you will have earned her unending resentment.

Midnight in Paris: I give it 2 ½ Samoas.