A homage to the City of Light | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

MOVIE REVIEW

In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen continues his sly expeditions to enchanting European cities. Some of those trips faltered, rather miserably, like the wearisome, London-set Scoop in 2006; and some sparkled, like the globally loved (except maybe in the Catalan capital) Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in which every stereotype of the Spanish trait and location was merrily exploited. The most European of American film-makers, the 71-year-old Allen made his finest films years ago on the streets of New York; here, the City of Light offers the uncontested spirit of what people think of Europe _ or at least Europe in the imagination of non-Europeans, mostly trapped in the image from the previous centuries _ so Allen takes a sweeping look at the present and the past and gives us what we may term an ironic-tourism postcard movie, part joke, part nostalgia.

Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris .

The bottom line, then: Midnight In Paris sits below the total crowd-pleasing calibre of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, though it's more spirited and somehow feels more personal to Allen than his other forgettable, European-set movies. Once again deploying a full army of cliches _ and Paris as a place and a fantasy has plenty _ the American director curries favour with his transatlantic fan base with a movie that's set both in contemporary Paris (in rain and in shine) and the much-parodied 1920s, that giddy decade of fabled soirees where Hemingway, Stein, Picasso, Dali and the mad youths of Surrealism made merry.