Midnight in Paris

This 2011 Woody Allen movie is all about the surreal experience the protagnist goes through during his stay in Paris.The film has the usual elements of fantasy and fiction with a little bit of the light hearted comedy and romance which are characteristics of a Woody Allen movie and is set up in the mileu of 20's bohemian Paris.

The film starts with a beautiful montage presentation of Paris and then sets off to introduce the protagnist,Gil, a Hollywood sceenwriter, who is visiting Paris with his fiancee and in-laws for a business cum pleasure purpose.He talks about his love for Paris( in the 20s in the rain)where he wishes to settle one day and write novels;which his fiancee,Inez,dismisses as a mere daydream. While in a restaurant together, they meet up with Inez's friends, Paul and his fiancee who were both Inez's school matees.

Paul ,'the pedantic man' as the guide rightly calls him, often speaks in a very authoritative nature and Gil does therefore find him to be insufferable. Inez on the otherhand is all over him and is very much impressed on how much he knows about Paris and French ;calling him 'bright and intelligent'.She even goes to the extend of suggesting Gil to show Paul his work so that he could critique it for him. Gil ,on the otherhand, is having a hard time finding some one to judge his novel. The next evening Inez's father invites them for wine tasting, after which Inez and her friends decide to go dancing while Gil decides to stay back and have a walk on his own. While strolling, he comes across an antique vehicle of the 20s and its champagne drunk passengers invite him to join them eventually leading him to a party where he meets his all time literary idols Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald,Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and the likes.He gradually falls for Adriana ,Picasso's mistress;while he visits Steins's salon with Hemingway to get his book reviewed by Stein.The movie lightly treads on the theme of nostalgias and the mental status of Gil was rightly stated by Paul at the beginning of the movie which is ' Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.' In the end, Gil comes to terms with the present world  and even goes to the extent of stopping Adriana from going back to the 1890's (when they coincidently get invited by some couple to join them in a party of the 1890s)which she considers the golden period; by stating that at some other point she'll consider another era the golden period and that life is a little unsatifying at times.Surely, by the end of the movie our love for Paris will be rejuvenated.

Owen Wilson has portryed the character of the bemused,naive,excited Gil with utmost ease and perfection.The cast also includes Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard who have played just right . This movie has been stated as one of the best movies Woody Allen has ever made.