Image: IMDb
I agree with the critics who say that the movie Midnight in Paris doesn’t boast the depth of Wood Allen’s classic films, but honestly it doesn’t has no effect on how much I love this movie. It’s funny, light and has a special charm provided by the Parisian atmosphere. I believe that these aspects were key factors to transform the movie into a huge commercial success. In the film, Gil (Owen Wilson) is an American writer and screenwriter who goes with his bride Inez (Rachel McAdams) to Paris. Walking through Paris at night alone, he finds outs he’s magically transported to Paris in the 20s at midnight, which are considered the best time and place of all by him. In these trips to the past , Gil goes to several parties where he meets many intellectuals and artists that he truly admires and were attending the City of Lights at that time, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and Salvador Dali. The analogy drawn between his trips to the past and his physical trip to Paris is very interesting. The nostalgia he feels when he returns from a time trip is probably the same that we feel when we come back home after a trip to some amazing destination. By the way, in the context of the film, the protagonist also lives through this last experience as well, once Paris is a city that he absolutely idolizes as a travel destination. The shooting in the in the French capital provided stunning scenarios to Midnight filming in Paris, like Monet’s gardens at Giverny, the luxurious interiors of the Hotel Le Bristol, rue du Faubourg St Honoré, the Musée Rodin, the Pont Alexander III, among others.
