Fridae

Sometime around the turn of the 20th century there was an incident subject to much ridicule that became known as the Moberly-Jourdain incident. It involved two female academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, who claimed to have experienced a timeslip into pre-revolutionary France on the grounds of Versailles. While numerous attempts at explaining it scientifically have been made, none quite convincing outside the most probable explanation the two women were making it up.

Trust Woody Allen however to be inspired by such an incident and turn it into a little riff on the unchanging human affinity for nostalgia. Midnight in Paris is set nearly a hundred years later, and the traveller is now American screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson). Gil is about to be married to his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams), and they’re on a trip in Paris where he is trying to finish his first novel. The company is full of annoying ugly American tourists. Having a museum guide who just happens to be played by current French First Lady Carla Bruni is definitely little to make up for people like know-it-all pedant such as Paul (Michael Sheen), so Gil takes off on a walk in the middle of the night just to take in Paris by himself and finds himself stepping through a timeslip into the period that he most idealises: the era of the Lost Generation in between the two world wars, where the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali,Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway roamed the streets of the City of Lights (many of them here played by some pretty fine extended cameos from some of today’s most talented actors).

Through another meeting with Adrianna (Marion Cotillard), he comes to realize that we are all inevitably constricted by our own time, and that it’s more important to live in the present.

Or does he? If so, what use does the past serve? Trust Woody Allen to approach these questions in a manner that is easygoing but never lightweight, as one is taken on a leisurely trip not just into history, but also into the uses and abuses of love, art and knowledge.

Anyone vaguely familiar or who loves the fashions, trends, literature and music of the inter-war years will not be disappointed by Allen’s irreverent, affectionate yet respectful treatment of the period. Part travelogue, part romantic comedy, and part primer to the Lost Generation, Midnight in Paris engages the mind as well as the heart with a scathing and yet affectionate look at our affinity for nostalgia.