Rating: PG
Running Time: 94 minutes
Release Date: now showing
This romantic comedy by Woody Allen is set in his favourite city (other than New York that is) Paris. Engaged couple Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) are on vacation, however instead of being swept up by the city of love they spend time apart. While Inez dances the night away with her pretentious friends, Gil embarks on a moonlit walk trying to find inspiration for his first novel after his Hollywood screenwriting career. At the midnight hour he takes a vintage taxi and finds himself back in the time of the 1920’s and starts socialising with the great literary writers and artists of that time.
Gil (a manifestation of Woody Allen himself of course) embarks on a love affair with Paris like his fellow writers Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Artists Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody) and Pablo Picasso (Marial Di Fonzo Bo) are also there to name a few. Gil becomes enamoured with Picasso’s lover Adrianna (Marion Cottilard). However Adrianna, like Gil craves of another time of the Belle Epoque in the 1890’s.
It’s a delightful film playing on Allen’s usual themes of infidelity, neurosis, and desire. However unlike some of his earlier films it seems to immerse itself into the culture and pays more attention to food, music and scenery. Unfortunately the artistic “giants” were portrayed in a cartoonish way at times making it feel too lightweight. Wilson (Wedding Crashers) was a strange casting choice but he managed to get through it with a reasonable amount of credibility. There wasn’t much complexity to McAdams' (The Notebook) character so her performance wasn’t a stretch. Cottilard (Contagion) was probably the most intriguing and convincing of this “threesome”.
If you like Woody Allen you will probably find it in enjoyable even if it’s just making the comparisons with his previous works.
3 / 5 stars
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