1000 Nights in the Dark: Midnight in Paris (2011)

Spain/USA

Feature Film | Fantasy Rom-Com | English & French | 1h34m

Cast: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Michael Sheen, Nina Arianda, Kurt Fuller, Tom Hiddleston, Mimi Kennedy, Alison Pill, Léa Seydoux, Corey Stoll, Tom Cordier, Adrien de Van, Sonia Rolland, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, Yves Heck

Short review | 381 words | 17/10/11 | 2011 Favourites

With Allen’s trademark pessimism having degenerated into barely palatable cynicism and misanthropy over the last few years, it comes as a genuine and very welcome surprise that Midnight in Paris, a beautifully acted, handsomely shot, and delightfully scored little romantic fantasy, proves to be such a charmingly optimistic work. His characters are still generally unhappy with their lot, and they still struggle to maintain loving relationships, but for once the diminutive New Yorker leaves us with the feeling that there is at least some hope for a better future.

The gently charming Owen Wilson plays Gil, an American screenwriter who dreams of literary success. He is holidaying in Paris with his fiancée, Inez (McAdams), and prospective parents-in-law (Fuller and Kennedy), busily working on his novel as he does so. One night, they bump into some old friends of Inez’s, the dreadful bore Paul (Sheen) and his better half Carol (Arianda). Rather than going dancing with them, as Inez asserts to do, the rather inebriated Gil decides to get a little air, taking a midnight stroll alone through the streets of Paris, instead. But hopes of a quiet night elude him, when he finds himself improbably whisked off to the 1920s in an old taxi cab. Before he knows it, he finds himself partying with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Pill [excellent] and Hiddleston), discussing writing with Ernest Hemingway (Stoll), dancing with Joséphine Baker (Rolland), having his novel read by Gertrude Stein (Bates), inspiring Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel (Brody [hilarious], Cordier, and de Van), critiquing Pablo Picasso (Di Fonzo Bo), marvelling at Cole Porter (Heck), and – most significantly – gently wooing artists’ muse Adriana (Cotillard). For several days, he leads a double life: by day, he suffers through his ever degenerating relationship with his fiancée, occasionally finding solace in the potential friendships that he sparks up with a patient museum guide (Bruni) and an attractive young market worker, Gabrielle (Seydoux); whilst by night, he lives the romantic high life, fulfilling all of his rose-tinted fantasies. Eventually, however, he comes to realise that the past will always have an allure that the present could never have (no matter which present it is), and decides to abandon his fantasy life in favour of an uncertain, though hopefully romantically rain-soaked future. A delight.

1000 Nights in the Dark: a collection of reviews of the single sentence, capsule, short, medium, and long variety, varying in length from fifty to a thousand-plus words, documenting my personal, exploratory journey through cinephilia.