FILM Woody Allen’s return to form

Woody Allen’s return to form


Maureen Laverty

Of Paris, Hemmingway wrote “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” If ‘Midnight in Paris’ is anything to go by, Woody Allen wishes he had lived there.
Owen Wilson takes on the surrogate Woody role, Gil, as a disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter: dishevelled, plaid-shirt and khaki-trouser clad. Gil finds that the city has revived his dormant longing to be a serious novelist and desire to be ‘struggling in a Paris apartment with a skylight and tuberculosis’..
Allen loves cities even more than he loves people. He casts them as the lead, allowing them to envelop each frame. ‘Midnight in Paris’ opens with a series of picture-postcard snapshots of the French capital: a sweeping montage accompanied by a romantic jazz score. It recalls the magic monochrome montages of New York that accompany Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ at the beginning of ‘Manhattan’.
The present setting is the five-star-luxury Paris enjoyed by wealthy middle-aged American tourists, like Gil’s irritating fiancée Ines (Rachel McAdams) and her agitated Republican parents. They are Allen’s favourite sort of cartoon snobs: egocentric and social-climbing; owners of ridiculously expensive vintage wicker chairs who find ‘nothing beautiful about walking in the rain’.
Gil is a diffident man who has a great respect for high culture but is deeply suspicious of the academic condescension of Ines’s friend Paul (the always-excellent Michael Sheen). A ‘pseudo’ intellectual, ‘marvellous’ dancer, ‘expert’ on French wine, Paul is akin to the arrogant intellectual who lectures his date about Marshall McLuhan in the cinema queue in ‘Annie Hall’.
Unfulfilled ambition, an unsuitable relationship and exasperating companions; escapism is the only relief for Gil. He stumbles drunkenly alone through Montmartre, the clock chimes midnight, a mysterious antique car pulls up, and he accepts a lift after its rowdy champagne-swilling occupants urge him to jump in. A means of magical transport: Gil is whisked back in time to a Jazz Age hedonistic cocktail party in composer Cole Porter’s lavish apartment. A method comparative with Allen’s masterly ‘Purple Rose of Cairo’ where a blue-collar housewife is courted by a movie star who steps out of the screen to join her in Depression New Jersey.
It’s the Paris of Gil’s dreams, the movable feast. He is humoured by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, scrutinised by Hemingway, mentored by Gertrude Stein, sips absinthe with Dalí and Man Ray. He falls for Picasso’s gorgeously compelling muse Adrianna (Marion Cotillard), her delicately complex European femininity contrasting with Ines’s one-dimensional pragmatism.
A wry, touching comedy, ‘Midnight in Paris’ is a charming breeze, a simple pleasure, dripping in Allen’s reliable trademark: sophisticated wit.

Maureen Laverty is PRO of Westport Film Club. ’Midnight In Paris’ will be screened at Westport Cineplex on Wednesday, March 7, at 8.45pm. Westport Film Club screens eight films a year at Westport Cineplex. Annual membership of €40 covers all screenings. Entry to each film for non-members is €10.