Midnight in Paris

Editorial

Gil is a Hollywood screenwriter. "The studios," explains Inez, his superficial wife-to-be, "adore him". A sure sign of spiritual bankruptcy. He aspires to write a novel set in a nostalgia shop. He just needs Paris to feed his reluctant muse.

Sadly, his fiancée is determined they traipse tourist spots. It takes a midnight stroll through the Rive Gauche to grant his wish — a miraculous trip back to Paris in the 1920s. What we have here is a Woody Allen time-travel movie.

Don't look so shocked. The New York auteur has been down this path before, fusing literary or cinematic worlds with the real. When you think about it, Allen's entire worldview is a fantasy. At times, ridiculously so — Gil ends up caught between the potential affections of three stunning women, not including a brief flirtation with France's First Lady, Carla Bruni, as a museum guide.

Owen Wilson might not have Allen's timing, but he's a sincere variation on the Woody-formula, adding to the relaxed mood. With greater ease and an elegance that escaped his ragged lay-off in London, Allen has made an adorable bagatelle, soft as a daydream, happy to wear its intellectual hat at an angle.

Naturally, he's not concerned with the mechanics of time travel. And Paris, of any era, comes beautifully dressed in mottled cliché.

What makes the central gag so buoyant is that Allen's icons are trapped in their own clichés. As surrealist Dalí, Adrien Brody is dutifully potty, exclaiming "Da-lee" in a chorizo-thick accent as if expecting applause. Plus, the film mocks its own pretensions.

There is wisdom at work here. Nostalgia is a form of denial, chides Allen. Every era glances back to another as the ideal. Grasp your own time. Midnight in Paris is not a magical return to Woody's heyday, rather a director thriving in the present.

Ian Nathan