Perhaps Woody's Finest

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2011)

I just saw this wonderful film in the perfect place, Montparnasse in Paris. It was showing at the Lucernaire at 53 rue Notre Dame des Champs, that cosy and quaint cineplex with its own café and theatres. Afterwards, my wife and I strolled up to the Dome and sat on the pavement (as it was summer), looking across at the Rotonde and sipping vermouth cassis, the favourite drink of the old Montparnassians of the 1920s. Then we walked back past the apartment of Gertrude Stein on rue de Fleurus, and Hemingway's last Paris apartment on Rue Ferou, as well as Man Ray's studio in the same little street (though they did not live there at the same time). All three of these people appear in the film. Kathy Bates is sensational as Gertie, and sits beneath her own portrait by Picasso, in a salon just like in the old photos of it. The film is full of cultural in jokes which those unfamiliar with the period will not get, and period details. For instance, Hemingway says he likes Picasso's work 'but he is no Miro'. Woody must have studied Hemingway's A MOVEABLE FEAST very closely and knew that the only major painting Hemingway was able to afford in Paris was 'The Farm' by Joan Miro, the painter whom he admired above all others. At one point the lead actor Owen Wilson is told he has just been dancing with Djuna Barnes, and he wisecracks 'No wonder she wanted to lead.' Only those aware of who Djuna Barnes was and of her inclinations would get the joke. The story features a young American, played brilliantly by Owen Wilson, who takes the place of Woody, who is now too old to play his own lead character, who visits Paris in modern times. He is accompanied by the fiancée from hell, played hellishly by Rachel McAdams with such fervour that one wants to strangle her as well as her horrible parents. Wilson is a writer and a dreamer who begins to go on late walks around Paris, with which he becomes infatuated. He goes to a certain magic place where at the stroke of midnight (hence the film's title), an old car drives up and he is urged to get in. This car transports him back into the golden age of the Montparnasse Era. He meets Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and many of the other leading cultural figures who were there at the time. As my wife said, 'it is a ridiculous idea but it works because it comes from the heart'. Rarely has Woody risked any filmic device quite so hazardous as this. The fact that he successfully pulls off this outrageous idea is a testament to his skill as a filmmaker. He both wrote and directed this film, which clearly means a great deal to him. (He also must have played the clarinet in that wonderful jazz at the beginning and end of the film soundtrack, though he modestly kept his name off the credits.) My wife and I thought we recognised the magic place where the car picked Owen Wilson up every night, so the next evening we strolled over there to confirm our suspicions, and we were correct. It is the charming little street called rue de la Montagne Saint Genevieve, in the 5th arrondissement, near the Pantheon, and on the right (which you cannot make out in the film) is my favourite little classical music CD shop, La Dame Blanche. The steps on which Owen Wilson sits are those of the side entrance to the Church of Saint Genevieve, which in the middle ages was the Church of Saint Stephen but changed its name. No magic car appeared to pick us up, but then we were there before midnight and hence too early for it. The only one of the 1920s characters in the film whom I ever met personally was Salvador Dali, and I would say that Adrien Brody captures him and his outrageous mannerisms to perfection, even though I only knew Dali four decades later. Corey Stoll does a superb job as Hemingway, Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill are excellent as Scott and Zelda, Yves-Antoine Spoto looks exactly like Matisse, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo looks and behaves eerily like Picasso, and so on. But the whole film is suffused with the warm glow and delicious charm of the incomparable Marion Cotillard, who plays the fictitious character 'Adriana', with whom Owen Wilson falls in love. And one can understand why he cannot resist her! The other woman in his life is the delightful Parisian beauty Léa Seydoux, another in the seemingly endless stream of cinematic talent of the Seydoux family, which is responsible for such a large proportion of what happens in the French film business. Is there simply no end to them? They just keep coming, generation after generation, like the Gallimards in publishing. This film has profound messages for us, presented as usual in comedic form, but behind all the jokes we sense a very serious Woody this time who is really trying to communicate essential things to us. Owen and Cotillard magically go back to the turn of the century, the Belle Époque, and meet Degas, Gauguin, and an uncannily convincing Toulouse-Lautrec (Vincent Menjou Cortes). Cotillard decides to stay behind, as to her this is her 'golden age', just as the 1920s is Owen's. They discover that Degas and Gauguin believe the Renaissance was a golden age, and they wish to go back to it. The message is that everyone imagines a different golden age depending on when they live, but we must learn to make the best of our own. The film is funny, heart-warming, deeply satisfying, and a wonderful evocation of the dreams we all have of seeking for fulfillment, whether in the past, or in the present. This may be the finest film that Woody Allen has ever made.