Midnight in Paris

Another relatively recent movie that I've got on my DVR from when it showed up in TCM's 31 Days of Oscar is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

The movie starts off with an extended, dialogue-free montage of Paris. Then, when the opening credit show up, they're accompanied by a dialogue by an engaged couple, Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams). Gil is a screenwriter who seems to be more in love with the city of Paris than he is with Inez, and would love to stay in Paris to work on his novel. They're on a vacation with Inez' parents, as Dad is on a working holiday. When they're at a restaurant, who walks in but two of Inez' old friends, Paul and his wife Carol. Paul and Carol, whom Gil doesn't know at all, are there because Paul has been asked to lecture at the Sorbonne, and they invite Gil and Inez to go with them to Versailles the next day, which is another source of tension between them.

The conflict continues, until one evening at a restaurant. It's a late evening, and Paul, Carol, and Inez want to take a taxi back to the hotel. Gil, however, is so in love with the city that he'd rather walk back to the hotel and soak in the atmosphere. While Paul is on one of the narrow streets, a vintage car pulls up and the passengers invite Gil to get in with him. Eventually Gil does, and the car takes all of them to a bar that seems like it's as out of the past as the old vintage car that drove them there is. Everybody else is dressed like they're from the 1920s, and old Cole Porter songs are playing.

And then Gil notices that the pianist looks surprisingly like Cole Porter himself. Surely that can't be possible, but then other similar folks from the age when the "Lost Generation" was in Paris show up, starting with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Obviously, this confuses Gil greatly, since he's from 2010 and there's no way this can possibly actually be the 1920s, no matter how much they drop names like Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), and Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody). Perhaps somehow, Gil really has been transported to the 1920s.

This is all exceedingly complicated for poor Gil, since there's no way anybody's going to believe that he spent a night in the 1920s. And when does he get sleep anyway? F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces Gil to Ernest Hemingway, who offers to share Gil's manuscript with Gertrude Stein. But as Gil leaves the building, he finds it's no longer a 1920s building.

At least, not until the following midnight. He gets picked up again, and this time meets Picasso's mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who starts a relationship with him and like Gil has an interest in the past. Except of course, the past for Adriana is a different past than for Gil. And how is Gil going to resolve his relationships with everybody back in 2010?

Midnight in Paris was for me, a charming little movie. Sure, it's unrealistic, but the movie makes no pretense of being grounded in reality. It's just a fun little story that to me didn't feel like it was trying to do anything profound. Just sit back and enjoy this little fantasy.