Müpa Film Club
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Being Woody Allen
The start is pleasant, but boring. As a song (Si tu vois ma mère) plays, we take a look round Paris, like casual tourists. Then, as the title appears, out of shot a romantic young American man and his significantly more experienced fiancée are discussing Paris. Will something come of it? You can be sure of it! Midnight in Paris is one of Woody Allen's most entertaining films.
There is no doubt you will laugh a little less uproariously than when watching its spiritual kin The Adventures of Picasso, though that's possibly because our hero, the successful Hollywood screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), is not only caught in a complicated journey through time, but also working, ruminating on his novel. He is searching for something that cannot be found in Beverly Hills or Malibu. As he does so, he becomes infatuated with Paris. Gil doubts himself and his qualities as a writer, just as his hard-headed fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) doubts her relationship with Gil - a relatively positive attitude given that her parents outright loathe him. Inez, however, is attracted to her old teacher and know-it-all, Paul... It wouldn't be right to give away all of the plot lines, but we can reveal that, at night, Gil finds himself back in 1920s Paris, right in the middle of the Avant-Garde, in the company of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dalì and Picasso. This is not our first case of time travelling with Woody Allen, given that he transported us to 2173 in The Sleeper (1973). He also bumped into Madame Bovary in his writing - though she was a little different from the novel... It is clear that the visitor from 2010 also has an effect on the past, or rather the future. Assuming that the translation of his tourist guide assistant (Carla Bruni, aka Madame Sarkozy) is correct. Wow, the whole thing is so very confusing! Except actually, it isn't confusing, because nicely, gradually, an important question emerges: what was the real golden age? How is it that the Here and Now is always ranked below those places and those eras that we didn't have the good fortune to live in?
Director: Woody Allen
Host: András Réz
Presented by: Müpa Budapest
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