From the Film Reel: Midnight in Paris

"Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present."

The latest offering from Woody Allen takes us from one metropolis to another. First it was New York, then London and Barcelona and now  Paris, but one component remains: the introspective, neurotic, painfully romantic protagonist. In Midnight in Paris, he comes in the form of Gil Pender(Owen Wilson), a successful Hollywood screenwriter frustrated with the life he leads in Los Angeles with his fiance Inez(Rachel McAdams). On an unplanned midnight walk around Paris, Gil slips into a parallel world which happens to be the protagonists crack whore world: 1920s Paris. There he meets a bevy of his idols: Ernest Hemingway, Belmonte, TS Elliot, the Fitzgeralds, and the most memorable of all: a lovely art-groupie named Adriana(Marion Cotillard), only to lose her to La Belle Epoque. In the meantime, the film allows its viewers to experience Paris as it should be: walking through the firelamp lit streets with a handsome, captivating stranger connecting over your shared love for Paris and gossiping about mutual friends like Picasso, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dali, Luis Bunuel and Ernest Hemingway. It almost becomes a game of "guess who's coming to dinner" where viewers are on the edge of their seats trying to work out who Gil will meet next, and in what way the past can influence Gil and vice versa. The perfect way to get lost and immerse yourself in one of the greatest cities in the world. Not only does this gem deliver a fresh take on nostalgia, it's a great hommage to the City of lights and the romanticism that it's famed for. Allen takes us on a journey which inspires us to remove ourselves from the dust of everyday life and immerse ourselves in a time greater than now through his story telling, urging us to daydream ourselves out of our daily frustrations.

Bonus points for using a classic Sidney Bechet number as background music. This film really had me at its opening scene. I just salivated at the shots of Paris. The Jardin du Luxembourg especially. How could anyone resist such beauty and charm from the city of romance?

Now I know that this isnt really Heminngway speaking, but his imagined person, I wouldn't dispute that Hemmingway would say such a thing.