How many movies have been set in Paris or had Paris in their title?
Where do you want to begin? Paris When It Sizzles, Last Tango In Paris, Two Days In Paris, An American in Paris, The Last Time I Saw Paris, From Paris With Love, Is Paris Burning?, April In Paris, Paris, J'Taime, An American Warewolf In Paris, Paris 36 and even the film simply titled Paris. Plus, let's not forget Paris, Texas.
Okay, so you get the idea.
The word "Paris" and movies (especially movies about love, romance and maybe even danger) seem to naturally go together. Paris is endlessly dreamed, imagined, reinvented, romanticized.
Now along comes Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris, set in the City of Lights and starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Mimi Kennedy, Kurt Fuller, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Marianne Cotillard and Adrien Brody among others.
Yes, this is billed as a "romantic comedy" and it boasts a large and notable cast. In fact, France's First Lady Carla Bruni is also in this film -- and let the record show that she does not play herself.
As you might guess, Woody Allen's fingerprints are all over this film and that gave me pause as I entered the theater. I don't like paying to see Woody Allen films -- not since Le Scandale and Allen's disgraceful treatment of Mia Farrow and his hooking up with his stepdaughter Sun Yi. Suffice it to say that Allen himself is endlessly unappealing and I'm grateful that he and his cohorts only reaped five bucks of my money via a bargain matinee.
Thankfully, Allen isn't in this film. He's nowhere to be seen -- not even via a Hitchcockesque walk-on.
Instead, the protagonist is the charmingly appealing Owen Wilson. Let's face it: Wilson is way easier on the eyes and ears than Allen and he's easier to identify with as well. Wilson plays a successful American screenwriter named Gil who specializes in Hollywood formula flicks. He makes a nice living but he would really like to get serious and write The Great American Novel.
The real love affair in this movie is between Gil and Paris -- not the Paris of today but the Paris of the 1920s, the era of the Lost Generation. So, in the course of the film we meet writers, artists and musicians such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, Salvatore Dali, Gertrude Stein and others. They're all here and they're all marvelously creative, indulgent, unpredictable and sometimes downright reckless.
Not that the story is placed in the 1920s. It's really a modern day tale -- sort of.
Rachel McAdams plays Gil's American fiance while Marianne Cotillard plays his 1920s love interest and Lea Seydoux portrays his in-the-moment Paris-loving soulmate. McAdams is trendy and attractive, Coutillard is steamingly seductive and Seydoux is wonderfully fetching. A guy almost doesn't know where to turn first: past, present or future?
Of course everything eventually gets sorted out but along the way you'll have to overlook Allen's scripted cheap shots at George W. Bush, Republicans, conservatives and Middle America. Hey, just chalk it up to the little's guy's hopelessly ingrained prejudices.
That way you'll be able to get past those inappropriate moments since there's much else to enjoy.
Lush is the only word to describe the sets and cinematography. The film is bathed in sunny yellows, rich greens and dreamy blues. And the scenes of Paris bring to life Hemingway's magical description of the city as "a moveable feast." Which means you can sit back and soak in the beguiling sights, the cool jazz, the vivid characters, the fine performances, the nostalgic patina and the whimsy of a story that for all its continental pretensions remains uniquely and distinctly American.
But then again -- where would our irrepressibly romantic images of Paris be without Hollywood? Indeed, where would Paris be without the Paris that lives in our minds?
