You can fool me, but you cannot fool Ernest Hemingway!

Midnight in Paris

(2011)

Slight but enormously enjoyable. Owen Wilson manages to be the perfect Allen-alt, replacing Woody's nervous energy with laconic charm. The time travelling plot is part Cinderella, part proper sci-fi (as it propels characters further back in time in search for an elusive Golden Age), and Allen is wise not put all his eggs in one basket by having events take place over a single night.

I particularly enjoyed Gill's encounters with the surrealists; Adrien Brody's Dali's obsession with rhinoceroses and Adrien de Van's Bunuel's mystification at Gill's suggestion of a premise for a movie. Marion Cotillard is beguiling as the object of Gill's fantasies, while Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen assume familiar Allen roles as antagonists to our hero's trajectory.

Allen's camera shows a certain lingering interest in the arses of McAdams and Lea Seydoux (Gabrielle); at least that's the only explanation I have for a scene where McAdams is loading the boot of a car. I loved the little coda on the fate of the private detective sent to check out what Gill was up to late at night. More winning than the similarly fantasy-orientated The Purple Rose of Cairo, and I put that squarely at Wilson's door; he's too often the best thing about material that's beneath him, but here he elevates the Woodster and makes him feel fresh.

****

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