I found this movie pleasantly surprising. I hadn’t known much about it, other than that it was Woody Allen’s latest, it stared Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams (apparently we went to York University at the same time), and that it was set in gay Paris. So, when the film took a fantastic twist a short ways in, I was taken aback– literally, to literary Paris of the 1920s.
It was a welcome twist, for two reasons:
1. I had a time warp experience early that evening, over a bottle of Molson Export Ale with a friend at Duffy’s Tavern. The bar was sparsely littered with ancient regulars, Depression-era jazz softly playing from the jukebox, when the bartender (who was born in the 1930s) produced a page of The Evening Telegram, dated November 12th, 1936. So I was in an old-timey mood.
“Business is better, reports President Bankers’ Association”
2. I got the jokes. Let’s just say if you haven’t read Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast,” go pick up a copy from your local used bookstore before you see the flick. It will help. I have a copy from the infamous Shakespeare & Co. in Paris that a friend lent me, then told me I could keep (yay!). I also have a dog-eared copy of Morley Callaghan’s “That Summer in Paris: Memories of tangled friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and some others” that I’ve yet to read. Oh, and you could freshen up your art history a bit too before heading to the local Cineplex: Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Picasso all make appearances. Woody Allen clearly knows his stuff. The characters were so authentique as they say. And the music! As always with Woody’s films, it was great. I once saw Woody perform with his jazz band in Naples, Florida. How very!
La Belle Époque was also featured (albeit briefly) in the film; the lesson here being of the-grass-isn’t-always-greener-on-the-other-side genre.
Paris: a rainy day by Gustave Caillebotte (1877)
In “Midnight in Paris,” Owen Wilson’s character Gil kept saying how much he loved Paris in the rain. As a rain afficionado myself, I completely agree. And when I left the theatre– lo and behold, it was raining! Yay! All in all, a great night.
I highly recommend this film for any francophile, literati, gliterati, jazzy, history buff. Or fans of good cinema in general.
Two charming thumbs up!
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