Perhaps more than any other city in the world, cinema has been exceptionally kind to Paris. Thinking of the city, it’s often not the place itself I find springing to mind, but its countless fictional depictions, from Breathless to Amelie. Joining this long tradition of cinematic love letters to the City of Lights is Woody Allen’s latest, Midnight In Paris. In this instance though, it’s not just the Paris of the present that’s being lovingly serenaded, but the city’s colourful history too. Owen Wilson plays Gil, a successful but dissatisfied Hollywood screenwriter daydreaming about the past while sleepwalking through his present day relationship to shallow fiancé, Inez (Rachel McAdams). Needing the space to properly enjoy the splendour of Paris alone, Gil takes a drunken late night stroll and quickly finds himself lost amongst the surprisingly picturesque alleyways. In a fairy tale-like twist he soon discovers that at the stroke of midnight each evening he can be magically whisked back in time to his beloved Paris of the 1920s.
It’s obvious that Gil’s nostalgia for the past is something that Woody Allen himself shares, so it’s no great surprise that these parts of the film are where Midnight In Paris hits it peak. The amber-lit streets of Jazz Age Paris are lovingly depicted as a vibrant, bohemian place where every bar seems inexplicably filled with the historical giants of literature, art and cinema (and surprisingly few ordinary Parisians). This gives Allen an opportunity to work in cameos by everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Luis Buñuel to Gertrude Stein. At it’s worst, this can feel like Midnight In Paris is trying to flatter the egos of its audience by seeing how many cultural in-jokes they can understand, but thankfully Allen manages to make these exchanges fun too by toying with the larger than life personalities on offer. Pablo Picasso is predictably moody and intense, whereas Adrien Brody’s cameo as a rhinoceros-obsessed Salvador Dalí sees him portrayed as outlandishly as you’d hope. While there’s no real depth to any of these caricatures, they do add a huge amount of welcome colour and humour. Nowhere is this more so than in Corey Stoll’s hyper masculine, cartoon-like portrayal of Ernest Hemmingway, who quickly becomes the highlight of the film.
Unsurprisingly, Gil is quickly swept away by this fairytale-like world and ends up juggling a romance between 1920s muse Adriana (Marion Cotillard) and his present day fiancé (Rachel McAdams). Whereas Marion Cotillard is able to bring a massive amount of charisma to her already charming character, Rachel McAdams struggles to give any likeability to a character who’s written purely for us to dislike. Ultimately this gap between the vibrant past and tedious present is one of the film’s biggest flaws. Woody Allen is asking some interesting questions about nostalgia here; namely, can there ever be said to be a “golden age”, when even the people living through this age reminisce about previous eras themselves? And does nostalgia for the past prevent us from ever being satisfied by our present? However, Allen never gives us a convincing enough reason why Gil should enjoy his existence in the present day. The characters Allen fills his present day version of Paris with are all little more than irritating archetypes lacking in any real nuance, and as a result it’s hard to form any attachments.
Despite characterisation that never really advances beyond the two-dimensional, this film remains a Parisian charming fairytale. Given Woody Allen’s remarkable work ethic (at least one film every year since 1982) it’s impressive that his writing can still include as many strong one-liners as are on display here, and it’s one of the elements that makes Midnight In Paris so easy to enjoy. This is a light, breezy film that whisks you away on an adventure just as it does Gil, but ultimately a lack of depth and subtlety means it’s probably not a journey you’re going to be remembering for long afterwards.