Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen – 2011 – USA/France

Okay, so Woody Allen hasn’t been terribly relevant since sometime in the 80s, but for the most part his film are always rewarding; for their comforting familiarity if not for any special originality.  He has been revitalized somewhat by his current (and unexpected) European phase – (who ever thought he’d leave New York?), but more importantly his films benefit greatly from the absence of Allen himself in the lead roles along with his progressively creepy insistence on portraying himself with younger and younger girlfriends.  The neurotic whining and trite flights of whimsy are still present, of course, (as is Allen’s weird and still inexplicable WASP-aphelia), but somehow, more often than not, it all seems to come together pleasantly anyway.  In Midnight in Paris, Allen takes a detour through The Twilight Zone by having his hero Gil (Owen Wilson), a dreamer with writer’s block, finding himself able to travel back in time to 1920s Paris, a time and place he considers a Golden Age.  Here he rubs shoulders with luminaries like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, Cole Porter and Gertrude Stein.  The mists of nostalgia begins to dissipate, thought, as Allen’s theme about the nature of romantic self-delusion takes center stage.