Lovely journey

Rating: 9/10 (14 March 2015)

Just like Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), this is one of Woody Allen's most fun and entertaining movies, although this one possibly has more depth if you're looking for that. A successful writer called Gil (Owen Wilson) is drawing apart from his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) with different outlooks on life. They've come to Paris on holiday with her parents but she spends all her time shopping and eating with friends she runs into. Gil wanders the city at night, and on one of his jaunts is picked up by a vintage car that propels him into the 1920s. He finds himself in clubs with all his artistic heroes: Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Cole Porter. He also falls in love with Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso's mistress, who actually pines to be back in the Belle Epoque turn of the century, and not the 1920s. The film is very firmly a comedy but it has something to say about nostalgia, wishing to be somewhere you're not, and choosing your own path. But like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the film also works well as light entertainment. It looks and sounds great and like most Woody Allen films, is made with great affection.