Apology of the glorious past

A French-American mélange kicks off the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen, the most French film made by an American director, was screened on Wednesday in the opening program with attendance of the author and the main cast.
Coproduced by USA and France the film is shot in Paris. It is a tribute to the city not only as a décor but also as a place where art and culture are always florescent.
However the filmmaker is not really talking about the present days. He goes back to the twenty’s via the story of an American writer who is looking for inspiration that he finds when he meets the famous artists of that time: Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, etc.
The “Mad years” (in French “Les années folles”) were indeed an epoch of cultural and intellectual effervescence. Paris was the place where to be for the most important artists of the world.
Midnight in Paris is an adaptation of Hemingway’s novel inspired by the same city that he called A Moveable Feast. A conversation is then engaged between the two artists beyond the fantasy.
It is also the story of Woody Allen himself. Gil (Owen Wilson), the protagonist is a successful Hollywood writer, but he is not feeling any satisfaction in his work for this industry. His future wife wants him to live in Malibu, but he is fascinated by the French capital where they are for vacation.
One night, after a diner with friends he is alone, drunk and lost in the streets of the city. Uninspired, and not sure about his own talent as writer, he dreams about meeting geniuses of another time.
A mysterious car from the twenty’s comes out of the darkness and stops in front of him. He gets in ends up in a feast where he meets first Ernest Hemingway, then Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel, Henri Matisse, etc.
He is attracted by the discussions he is having with these geniuses which provide him a big inspiration. Since then his days are limited to waiting for the night. Whatever his fiancée does, doesn’t work to bring him back to the present.
At the end, he finishes his book. He is having good feelings about it, but he loses his fiancée. Is it worth it? That’s the question. Where is the truth: in the concrete reality or in the dreams?
Gil leaves the fake and bourgeois life made of artifice and stereotypes where his relation with his fiancée was leading him. He prefers the world of fantasy represented by a fauna of persons from another time. There he can enjoy a sort of poetic Delirium.
Woody Allen also leaves Hollywood for Paris. This is not the first time that the Director is working out of the USA. He was in London for Match point (2005), then in Barcelona for Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008). He is indeed well known as the most European filmmaker of America.
Still the Paris he ends up in is obviously not the one of the 2010. The Paris he is dreaming about is the city where artists where enjoying life all the time discussion the sense of poetry and ideas of films and paintings.
The question is then if it is still the same nowadays? By choosing to go back in the time, isn’t a way to him to say that Paris is not the same, and that our time is not as attracting as the glorious past.
Woody Allen confirms again that he is always an outsider. He never accepted to be in a competition in any festival. Is it because it is too real for his fantasy? But at the same time, opening a festival like Cannes is like putting him above the fray.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/LifeStyle/Entertainment/-/812796/1163094/-/4a6ekj/-/index.html