Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2012)

This is an amusing tale about a time traveller in 1920s Paris, wrapped up in an irritating framing device about a group of obnoxious modern-day Americans staying in the city. Allen is fond of magical plots and, as in The Purple Rose of Cairo, his most successful venture in this genre, he does not waste time on explaining how the magic works. His protagonist, Gil, just has to sit on some steps in Monmartre when the clock strikes midnight and he is transported back to his golden age. The audience has an amusing time recognising the famous denizens of 1920s Monmartre before they identify themselves and there are a few good jokes. The one I liked best is Gil suggesting the plot of The Exterminating Angel to a bemused Louis Bunuel. Interestingly, Allen also referenced the Bunuel film in The Purple Rose of Cairo where the on-screen characters sit around in evening dress, unable to leave. The stand-out cameos in this section of the film are Adrian Brody as a rhinoceros-obsessed Salvador Dalí and Kathy Bates as an unfeasibly accommodating Gertrude Stein. But I did miss Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.
In the framing device Gil is staying in Paris with his airhead fiancée, her Tea Party Republican parents and two pretentious friends. This part of the film could usefully have been left on the cutting-room floor. Even more irritating is that it is shot in the style of a travelogue, rather like Vicky Cristina Barcelona. We see interminable shots of Parisian tourist attractions accompanied by mind-numbing, imitation Django Reinhardt music. I have to declare an interest here: I used to work in Paris and I am immune to its so-called charms. One of the characters says: "That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me". One of the most irritating things that I found about Paris was that most of my Parisian colleagues would have agreed with that sentiment.
It is amazing how even the most brilliant actors, when playing the lead in Allen's films, adopt his mannerisms, vocal tics and persona. Owen Wood is Gil and is by no means a brilliant actor but he produces the most accurate imitation of Woody Allen that I have yet seen on the screen. And I don't mean that in a nice way. Marion Cotillard is Adriana, his love interest from the 1920s. Her Golden Age is the Belle Epoque but when they go back there and meet Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Degas they are told that, no, the Golden Age is the Renaissance. Allen is making a small, but valid point here: that everyone hankers after an earlier period when everything was wonderful but, for the vast majority of people, now is the best of possible times. Eventually Gil comes to accept this, not least because he cannot envisage a world without painkillers and antibiotics. I tend to agree: in the 1920's I would not have been able to beam down this film from a satellite and watch it in the comfort of my own home.