Midnight in Paris

I thought I'd give Midnight in Paris a try because I like the early Woody Allen works such as Radio Days and The Purple Rose of Cairo. His recent stuff hasn't appealed to me as they don't feel very "worthy" of the supposed high reputation he has garnered over the years.  I feel like they have been a variation on the same topic--a younger and often naive woman is attracted to an older man, sometimes to the point of adoration--and because the films are star-studded, they feel like a modern day version of the TV show The Love Boat.


Owen Wilson stars as an aspiring novelist Gil who seems to have an affinity for things from a few generations past.  I say "seems to" because other than the novel he is writing, about a character who works in a nostalgia novelty shop, and his yearning, he really is not attuned in any other way in his life (that we are shown).  He is engaged to the demanding daddy's girl Inez (Rachel McAdams), whose parents don't find him a very good match for her.  Apparently Inez thinks this too, because obvious to us but not Gil is her attraction to her old boyfriend Paul (Michael Sheen).

The couple have joined Inez's parents on a business trip to Paris.  One night Gil explores Paris on his own and at the stroke of midnight, some strangers invite him to party, and at first he thinks they are dressed in costumes from the 1920s era.  But when he begins meeting characters such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein, he thinks perhaps he got overdrunk and is imagining things.

But the next night this happens again and he meets more and more famous characters from the past.  He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), the paramour of Matisse, Picasso and eventually Hemingway.  Gil falls for her loveliness and yearns to live in the 1920s with her.  But she in turn longs to live in the 1890s.

While this story idea seemed pretty interesting, including a lot of interesting characters from the past which could have been explored, I found their personifications pastiches and comical and not more realistic, which I would have preferred.  Were their personifications perhaps just Gil's wishes for who he wanted them to be like, interesting, high-living characters who saw artistic talent in him (where Inez and the modern day characters don't)?  I don't think Allen explored this enough in a serious way, and more like he coasted along doing the same thing again.  The realization of his dream characters were just that--fantasies.

The modern day characters such as Inez and her parents, Paul and his current girlfriend, were mostly shallow people more concerned with appearances and following along with the pack in terms of their interests, and not concerned with each other as real people.  It is easy to see why Gil would escape to a time and woman who is more attuned to himself, but the film does not give us reasons why he would involve with Inez in the first place, other than just some plot contrivance.

And later Allen creates yet another fantasy romance for Gil in a girl who runs an antique shop who shares his affinity for old things.  But I find Allen's protagonists in his later films not very real men and not offering very much to the women in their lives, whether it is the one they are meant to be with or the one they begin the movie with.  The relationships end up being fantasy romances like we all wish we had, which, yes, is befitting romantic comedies, but I find the better comedies have more dramatic and emotional components.  Each group of characters in this film are too much on the far end of their respective spectrums and less in the middle, so neither is believable nor realistic.  Gil, on the other hand, is not deeply drawn although he comes to the realization we expect him to.

In comparison to The Purple Rose of Cairo, which has a similar story plot, I find that Mia Farrow's character had a more poignant longing to belong to another place and time, and the fact that she didn't have a happy ending elevates that film over this one.  Her character came from a time period where the masses didn't chase after their dreams, and suffered in silence.  Compared to Gil, her discovery and loss is more important.