Woody Allen returns to theaters in style with Midnight in Paris. This comedy centers on Gil Pender (Owen Wilson, Hall Pass), a successful screenwriter. Pender travels to Paris with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams, Sherlock Holmes). In search of inspiration to finish his first novel, he leaves his girlfriend behind with an unpleasant couple of friends. While Gil walks the streets of Paris, he discovers he can travel to the past after midnight, specifically to the 1920’s.

There Pender meets the artistic luminaries of the time. These include Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, his literary idols. Gil also mingles with musicians Cole Porter and Dorothy Dandridge, as well as Surrealist artists Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. The plot never clearly states if Pender is living or not in a fantasy. It gets laughs out of Gil’s fandom, naïveté and most of all his interactions with an art “groupie” from that era, played to perfection by Marion Cotillard (Inception).

Midnight in Paris in a Nutshell

Enjoying the film does not require extensive knowledge of the Parisian age it evokes. Still, it’s filled with plenty of humorous details just for intellectuals, as well as lovers of literature, art and film. The whole cast is spot-on in their portrayals, but Corey Stoll (Salt) and Adrien Brody (Splice) steal the show as Hemingway and Dalí, respectively. They make you want to see a movie starring only their characters.

Woody Allen delivers the entire project with confidence and good faith. So much so that he even manages to add a moral to the story without it feeling forced. Midnight in Paris celebrates the City of Love, its history and its eternal charm.

Available on Blu-ray, Netflix and the iTunes Store.

This review first appeared on the Revista U website. Click here for the original article (in Spanish).