Review: Midnight In Paris

By Colleen Glenn

Fantasy and nostalgia have long been prominent themes in Woody Allen’s work, but perhaps nowhere are the two entwined so tangibly as in his most recent film, Midnight in Paris.

Released at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2011, Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy that thrives upon the gap between reality and illusion through which Allen’s protagonists often wander. Not unlike Alice (1990) or The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Allen’s latest work features a “lost” hero who learns lessons not through facing the hard facts of life, but rather the opposite: through surrendering—at least temporarily—to the fantastic.

In this case, the fantastic is not accessed via Eastern herbs or by cinematic experiences, but by the hero’s own infatuation with the past. Owen Wilson, playing the familiar neurotic, endearing Allenesque leading man, stars as Gil, a self-described “hack” movie screenwriter, who has ambitions of becoming a serious novelist. While visiting Paris with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), Gil’s love affair with the city becomes the catalyst for the eventual termination of his engagement.

The couple’s incompatibility is highlighted by their sharply contrasting reactions to Paris. Gil is all wonder and awe at its charms, while Inez is annoyed and unappreciative—the stereotype of the xenophobic, spoiled American. Gil’s adoration of the city leads him on a series of nightly, magical transports into Paris of the 1920s, where he engages in a series of encounters with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Gertrude Stein (who generously reads his novel and offers him feedback).

Allen’s film becomes truly magical during Gil’s nightly adventures into the past. Indeed, the film is a sort of English major’s dream where our most revered literary and artistic giants are brought back to life before our eyes.

Eventually, Gil learns that the pleasures of living in the past only distract him from living fully in the present. He returns, permanently, to the present day, but he also returns a changed, happier man.

Owen Wilson performs remarkably well in the role, harnessing some of Woody Allen’s signature onscreen neuroses, as well as channeling his own previous work in which he so often plays the sweet, child-like goofball. Allen—who can no longer play the leading man in his movies due to age and due to the personal scandal that marred his image—has found an actor who can credibly embody the qualities Allen desires in his leading men in romantic comedies.

What doesn’t work is Rachel McAdams, as well as Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy (who play her parents in the picture). While I suspect the heart of the problem is in the script and not their performances, their characters are so underdeveloped and ugly that their flatness detracts from the film and teeters on caricature.

The cinematography itself is responsible for much of the film’s romance. Paris and its attractions are not unlike Allen’s treatment of New York City in so many of his previous films. While Midnight in Paris probably will not be included as one of Allen’s most important films, its charm will allow audiences to escape into a delightful summer fantasy.