“Midnight in Paris” is just the revival of an old Woody Allen

Roman Polanski has moved to “Carnage” Paris in the United States. Woody Allen in “Midnight in Paris” takes the opposite path: Move America on the banks of the Seine. The most American of European directors near Hotel Economici Parigi, and the most European of American directors, despite the apparent reversal, however, take it away from America. Polanski for reasons of law, Allen productive incompatibilities.
The first, when the Polish communism in Poland was to limit the artistic representation, found in America the land of freedom. The second, after an exciting career in his homeland, the first comic and then celebrated master of the art cinema, came into collision with the production profitability problems of his films, and found a second youth in Europe . For Woody Allen in recent years has been a succession of European stakes, difficult to keep in memory. Of course his beloved Paris. And then the beautiful, bruised and hypermodern London. The sunny and joyous Barcelona. A passage in Rome (the set of her upcoming film). Finally, to close, the magical Venice.
So, in short, and say it like it is, the Europeans have funded an American author that Americans no longer wanted to finance. Or they wanted to fund only in part. The last work of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”, is the attempt to revive a body that extraordinary comic no longer exists. Woody Allen to the best of times. The film opens as the “Manhattan” (1979). A visual tribute to the beauty of the city (in that case was New York, now the City of Light). Then comes the double stage that Allen has chosen to transform himself young, Gil. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful writer really wants to be a writer. In Hollywood, love (and pay handsomely) his scripts. But you want to put the art of writing? And where you can write a truly great American novel? In Paris, of course. Oh, easy to Paris. What is Paris? Today the Centre Pompidou and the glass pyramid at the Louvre? Or the Paris of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cole Porter? Meanwhile, we remain in the Paris of today, in which Gil lands, American in Paris as a happy child, eager to get wet in the rain. The writer has a girlfriend beautiful dissatisfaction, which is about to marry.
The girl is not only beautiful, but rich and sophisticated. His father is a load of money. In fact, the bride and groom spend the holiday in the luxury five-star kindly offered by her parents. The couple, to see it as being entirely stocked. He dresses and moves like an intellectual. Her as the spoiled girl, all shopping and low culture. So perfect, because opposites attract. But in between there is Paris. Gil feels at home there, and with the passing of time begins to consider the stay is not a fleeting holiday, but the chance of a lifetime. Why not stay there and finally find the right inspiration to finish the novel that haunts him? To succeed it takes a turn. And, on time, arrives. As in fairy tales, the chimes of midnight, materializes in the street an old car. Way we enter the magic door.
The time machine moves back the clock of history. We are in the City of Light of the twenties. Here Picasso and his women (pictured twisted in his paintings). Salvador Dali’s obsessed with rhinos. Here Hemingway talks like Hemingway. Here Scott Fitzgerald loved to go away leaving the arm of a bullfighter, and a moment after the chase consumed by jealousy. Gil wanted the “movable feast”? Here it is served. At the end of the night all over again as before. Gil is again struggling with a girlfriend who loves less and less, a Republican who considers him a father-Trotskyist, a mother-in-law who accused him of having no taste, and especially do not want to spend. Meanwhile there are also some glimpses of the “first lady” of France, Carla Bruni Sarkozy, and a further step back in Paris, the Moulin Rouge, between the French Can-Can dancers.
Then, like a fairy tale with a happy end, it all comes together. In the sense that Gil spring suites, girlfriend, millionaire-in-law, securities Hollywood, and remains in Paris. Only? Do not exaggerate. Find your soul mate by chance and, finally, walking in the rain without an umbrella.
Moral of “Midnight in Paris? Better to live in the present, though difficult, impossible dream of the past. A little ‘cheap? Maybe. The film is graceful, elegant, funny at times. A couple of times hilarious. Many recalled another work of Woody Allen, ” The Purple Rose of Cairo “. Exactly, it’s an old Woody Allen. And there’s nothing else to add.