Midnight in Paris

January 22, 2012 at 8:10 pm | Posted in Film Review | Leave a comment
Tags: Marion Cotillard, Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Woody Allen

Spoiler: plots details present.

I am not normally a fan of Woody Allen films, but this was surprising interesting and humorous. Marion Cotillard gives a wonderfully enchanting performance, and Owen wilson plays Woody Allen better than Woody Allen! If they ever make a film about Woody Allen, Wilson will play him.

In Midnight in Paris, Gil Pender, a successful, but dissatisfied Hollywood scriptwriter, experiences an epiphany while on holiday in Paris. Gil (Owen wilson) is able to escape the cloying mundane company of his fiancee (Rachel McAdams) and her parents, in the present, to Paris in the 20’s. There/where/when he meets all sorts personalities, including: Cole Porter, F Scott Fitzgerald (and Zelda), Earnest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Dali, and Adriana.

Gil strikes up a relationship with Hemingway, Stein and Adriana. Who restore his flagging ambition to be a writer – Hemingway: “You must be fearless”. Adriana (Marion Cotillard) is beautiful and enchanting – a muse and object of desire for the early impressionists – in Paris to study with Coco Chanel.

Gil achieves , via a yellow Peugeot Landaulet 184, that goes drives through Paris at midnight – shades of the ‘Ghost Bus’ from Harry Potter. Gil and Adriana even manage a visit to the Moulin Rouge and Maxims in the 1890’s.

In the end, Gil chooses to stay in the Paris of today to write, but must also choose which women to stay with.

I am going to see this again.