Woody Allen goes for a change of scenery, moving from Manhattan to Paris with great results. This is quite possibly the best late-career effort from the legendary director. Here, his nebbish onscreen character is played by Owen Wilson, a literature professor turned screenwriter contemplating his upcoming marriage to Inez (Rachel McAdams) while vacationing in Paris.
One night, taking a stranger’s advice, he gets into an antique cab, finds himself transported to 1925, and stumbles into literary giants Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and Ernest Hemingway. Imagine his surprise when they offer to critique his work. Wilson spends much of his time dreaming of the past.
His novel is about a man who runs a “nostalgia shop,” and he finds himself mingling more and more to the roaring twenties, among the Lost Generation. Inez’s family suspects something, and not without good reason (after all, she’s having an affair with a former college boyfriend, the stuffy pseudo-intellectual Michael Sheen.) Not sure about his future with Inez, or even his future as a writer, Wilson falls for freespirited Adriana (Marion Cotillard) in 1925, content with living in the past.
Wilson playing Gil is lovably neurotic with the sharp one-liners that only Woody Allen can write, and he’s perfectly at home speaking and thinking them. Instead of the overly silly, sometimes sentimental stuff that Allen’s been serving up lately, comes a pretty good and thoughtful movie about living life in the present and moving forward.
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