Midnight in Paris follows Gil, a dissatisfied screenwriter-aspiring-novelist who has fallen out of love with the rat race of LA and has fallen instead for the City of Light. His ambition is to write a novel and become “one of the greats”. While in Paris, at midnight, a 1920s cab pulls up and takes him to a speakeasy where he meets Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso and many more (some of the aforementioned “greats”). Through travelling between his fantasy life in the past and his growing disdain for the present, Gil learns valuable lessons on the nature of idealism, nostalgia and dysfunction in his present life.
The film is entertaining. I wasn’t bored at any point and who doesn’t want to spend an hour and a half indulging the oui-oui hon-hon baguette tendencies that lie within us all (excluding Rachel McAdams apparently). However, despite huge critical success, an incredible cast and one of the most inspiring locations in the history of art and culture, the film is overwhelmingly meh. And the more you reflect on the film after watching the more painfully tone deaf the narrative reveals itself to be.
The thing that pains me most is we all know a Gil. Gil has such an overwhelming sense of importance in his craft which undeniably comes from the fact that he's a cis, white, straight, wealthy man who has most likely never been told any idea he's had sucked so, therefore, can indulge himself completely without a thought for anyone else around him. He asks Inez to uproot her entire life in LA (where we learn she has a house, a job, friends and family) to move to Paris with him after being there for mere days. When she declines, he sulks, ignores her friends and family, cheats on her and finally leaves her. Not to imply that Inez is a saint, however Allen is so desperate to pit the audience against Inez when it's revealed she cheated on Gil, even after having just watched him steal earrings from her to give to his mistress Adriana! Who for the record was also cheating on Picasso and Hemmingway with Gil and each other. Tres francais! It just baffles me how Allen pulls his audience into this emotional, European polygamous mindset, yet then the films narrative twist is Inez slept with somebody else. So would it be ok if she was a man? Or french?
Not to mention the whole plot operates under the premise that Gils book is a work of genius, and regrettably it doesn’t take a literary genius to clock that his idea sucks. A nostalgia shop is a metaphor about as subtle as a brick through a window, but if Hemingway won’t tell him who will?
Woody Allen, a deeply problematic director whose films and narratives are often painfully anti-woman, anti-diversity and pro-wealthy. And who has made no effort at all to improve this in recent years, to which the academy and critics alike seemingly will turn a blind eye completely. And even if you are willing to watch without acknowledging Allen molesting his step daughter in real life (a sentence that pains me to have to address even a hypothetical audience with), Midnight in Paris within itself is unavoidably tone deaf and problematic. Allen has, since the days of “Manhattan'' portrayed the wealthy as the height of culture and intellect. all white, all straight, big fake american smiles whose only concerns are which $15,000 a night hotel room they are getting too and which fifteen year old Merlot has the more earthy undertones for them to enjoy. And that's not to say Midnight in Paris doesn't brush upon some class-transcendent human storylines, such as the grip of a loveless relationship or the comforting bite of nostalgia, but the audience are so bombarded with this distancing rich-porn motif that these storylines feel like an after-thought.