A Woody Allen love letter to Paris and love itself, if the two can be separated.

Rating: 9/10 (13 August 2017)

This movie is a fanciful romp through time and space in the City of Lights, with a screenwriter-turned-aspiring-novelist (Owen Wilson as Gil Pender) as the protagonist. Its central conflict is about love, creativity, and that funny feeling of nostalgia for periods which you personally have never seen, for Gil the 1920s and for Adriana the 1890s. It is wry, fanciful, and that sort of chuckle-funny that Woody Allen excels at. It is rarely funny enough to laugh, and the series of inexplicably attractive women that surround the creative types of the movie is wish fulfillment at its worst.
Woody Allen's unmistakable touches cover this movie, and it is richer for it. The clichéd image of romantic Paris is mocked, extended, and even reinvigorated by his irreverent touch. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams both do fine jobs, and Wilson's character dominates the movie, but the real star to me is Marion Cotillard's wonderful portrayal of Adriana. She is an effervescent and artistic delight.
This movie is well worth a watch, and I enjoyed it a great deal.
(I have seen this before, but I last watched it on August 13, 2017)