Suspending all disbelief...

Rating: 4/10 (6 August 2012)

Compared to this take on time travel, Doctor Who is the most believable thing ever made. Why does the car from the past take the same road every night? And why do the people in it pick Gil to accompany them? And why, most of all, does Gil accept so readily? I mean, who would get into a strange car in some dark road in Paris in the middle of the night and drink whatever the people in it offered? "Where are you taking me?", Gil asks, sipping his wine (?). If the answer had been: "Oh, we're drugging you right now and then we'll kill you and harvest your organs", Gil would have deserved a Darwin award.
Gil accepts the fact that he has just traveled back in time 100 years and that now all the literary greats of the time want to be his friends (and listen to him talk about all his problems at length) after about 5 minutes. Has he never heard of concepts like reenactment and cosplay? I find it pretty plausible that in a big town like Paris there might be enough people interested in these things to form a proper club that meets every night in a kind of a tavern. The fact that as soon as he leaves the bar the first night he finds himself in front of a laundromat instead doesn't convince me either: his fiancée had previously hinted at his tendency to get lost.
No, sorry, to me this film is the story of a man who by sheer luck escapes brutal murder and is then messed with by a couple of very good reenactors. But it helps him find his way, so I guess the morale of the story is that even incredibly naive people get lucky sometimes.