‘Midnight in Paris’: Woody doesn’t blow this French kiss

Part time-travel fantasy, part romantic period piece, part literary fable, and wholly charming, Midnight in Paris inspires a sweet nostalgic not only for a justly glorified collective cultural past (Paris in the 1920s, Hemingway’s “Moveable Feast”), but also for the bygone golden era of its legendary writer-director, Woody Allen, here returning to the blithe spirit and creative freshness that marked earlier, similarly quirky filmic flights of fancy, like Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), Radio Days (1987), Bullets Over Broadway (1994) and particularly The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), unencumbered by the darkly dramatic undertones of his fanciful “dramadies” like Stardust Memories (1980) and Deconstructing Harry (1997). Nor is Midnight nearly as gritty and downbeat as 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown (starring Sean Penn as a Depression era jazz guitarist based on Django Reinhardt). Midnight, which is more like a ray of sunshine breaking through a gloomy sky, is in fact Woody Allen’s most purely satisfying film since Sweet and Lowdown, even more so than his critically acclaimed and atypical murder-drama Match Point (2005) or the inexplicably popular romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). His latest film almost completely washes away the bitter taste still lingering in this patron’s palette from Allen’s shockingly disappointing collaboration with one of history’s most gifted funnymen, Larry David, in 2009’s abysmal failure Whatever Works (nothing here). To be fair, its ambitions are simple, but for where he’s aiming, this one hits a refreshing bulls eye, a standout in a body of work that has been distressingly hit and miss - mostly miss - since his last bona fide masterpiece, 1989’s Crime and Misdemeanors. But Woody Allen’s spotty track record contains at least as many classics as clunkers, since he boasts an astonishingly prolific career that is more often cited for its ever-expanding volume than its inconsistent level of quality.

In brief, Midnight concerns a self-described Hollywood hack, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson, who, like all leading men stand-ins for the aging Woody, somehow manages to mimic his mentor’s trademark speech patterns and gestures while still retaining his own unique core persona) on a trip to Paris with his rather bitchy fiancée Inez (sexy Rachel McAdams) and her conservative parents (making for some pointed but somewhat incongruent political jabs) while struggling to complete a novel. Gil’s serious literary aspirations are undermined by his unsupportive traveling companions as well as his artistically suicidal reputation for making lots of money writing successful but forgettable screenplays, especially when he openly considers moving to Paris, the City of Light’s elegant, historically rich environs proving powerfully inspirational, “especially when it rains.” Allen lavishes the same unabashed adoration on Paris, past and present, both via character reflections and typically stunning postcard cinematography, as he did with his masterful cinematic love letter to his beloved hometown, Manhattan (1978). Via a magical mystery midnight carriage ride he hitches late one evening while taking a solitary stroll through his dream city, Gil is nightly transported back to his escape period of choice, the 1920s, where he encounters his heroes, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston), Scott’s famously neurotic wife Zelda (Allison Pill), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), who agrees to read and critique his novel, along with such famous (and brilliantly cast) artistic icons of that time and place including Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Josephine Baker (Sonia Rolland), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo)and Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody). During his scientifically unexplained retro excursions, Gil meets and falls in love with a gorgeous if elusive foreign “art groupie” (ethereal yet earthy Marion Cotillard, who has my vote to play Nora Charles opposite her Public Enemies co-star Johnny Depp in the proposed remake of The Thin Man), while also casually flirting with a pretty, present day Parisian shop girl (Léa Seydoux). This isn’t a triangle or quadrangle so much as a pleasant little circle of colorful if incredible circumstances in which Gil learns a valuable lesson about appreciating and accepting one’s own time of life on Earth, while taking control of one’s own destiny. It’s a light lesson, heavy on levity, and it’s a welcome throwback, if not total return to form, for one of contemporary cinema’s most significant, if frustrating, filmmakers.