MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Blu-Ray Review
If there's one thing I got from watching Woody Allen's latest, it's that I hope this won't be the last collaboration between the writer-director and actor Owen Wilson. Wilson is surprisingly an effective proxy for Allen (as is often required by the male lead in Allen's comedies), but Wilson's natural charisma and gentle delivery softens the anxiety somewhat, shifting neurosis into polite confusion, and even making the prospect of his character cheating on his shrewish fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams) seem like it's not too big a deal.
Wilson is the good news while the not-so-great news is that Midnight In Paris didn't quite work for me, probably because it feels like the deck is stacked against the actor's screenwriter/novelist character, Gil. In the present, he's engaged to McAdam's shrewish and dim Inez, much-harangued by her disapproving parents, and not quite aware that he's in competition with Michael Sheen's stuffy academic Paul for Inez's attention. I'd say let Paul have her, she's terrible. But let me lay out the premise for you and then tell you why these elements hurt (but didn't cripple, necessarily) the film.
During a trip to Paris with the fiancee, Gil falls in love with the city and begins nursing ideas about staying while working on his novel. His still-evolving book is a kind of respite from his successful but unsatisfying screenwriting career and he harbors notions that the vibrancy of Paris will somehow reinvigorate his creativity, while he strolls through the city's streets hunting up vintage books and records. Not to be too flippant, but these are rich white people problems, the kind which might have been grating under another actor. Anyway, after getting separated one night from Inez, Gil wanders onto a street corner where he's invited to hop into a car filled with heavy-drinking Frenchmen and women and his next stop is improbably Paris in the 1920's, during the period in which literary giants Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein held court (and a pretty art groupie played by Marion Cotillard catches his eye).
The next morning, Gil returns to the present, and of course, Inez doesn't believe him and hates the city, her right-wing parents think their future son-in-law's head is in the clouds, and we ask ourselves how these four people have come to occupy the same room together more than once.
Anyway, the movie beats a constant drum about nostalgia: it's the subject of Gil's novel, it's why he's so enamored with the same era in Paris, and even factors into the movie's best moments when the time travel conceit gets twisted. Cory Stroll does a hilarious Ernest Hemingway impression (Allen has him constantly looking for a fight and I love his line about why he won't read Gil's book), and I could easily watch Adrien Brody's Salvador Dali have boozy, rollicking, surreal adventures in the wake of his goofy but fun performance here. Oh, and these segments of the movie are beautiful, did I mention that? Allen captures a quality of the light that gives everything this warm, comforting, glow that lends itself well the the alcohol-impaired adventures of Gil and company.
But I just had trouble getting over the stuff in the present or how horrible McAdams' character was. Allen should be commended, I guess, for making such a sweet and generally adorable actress so completely and totally unsympathetic here and her awfulness, her complete and total vapidity make her hard to take seriously as a character and the fact that Gil is with her feels even more implausible than any time travel shenanigans. It's a shame, too, because if Allen had allowed us to enjoy some of the characters in the present as actual human beings, it might have made the fantasy sweeter and more affecting.
Audio/Video Special Features
There are ample low-light scenes throughout Midnight In Paris that beautifully illustrate Allen still has an eye for composing a scene and staging, and they fare very well on this disc. The soft and gentle quality of the lighting is evident throughout, but you never get the sense that you're watching any kind of muddy or poorly-reproduced image. I'd need to go back and listen to the DTS-HD audio mix, but there's not a lot here to get worked up over.
Ditto, the special features which simply include a brief press conference from Cannes. While I'd love to hear actors talk about working with Allen and his process, it's really too short to be especially illuminating.
Midnight in Paris is available on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD now.
