Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy fantasy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Set in Paris, the film follows Gil Pender, a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his materialistic fiancée and their divergent goals, which become increasingly exaggerated as he travels back in time each night at midnight. The movie explores themes of nostalgia and modernism.
Produced by Spanish group Mediapro and Allen’s Gravier Productions, the film stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Kathy Bates and Adrien Brody. It premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was released in North America in May 2011. The film opened to critical acclaim and has commonly been cited as one of Allen’s best films in recent years. In 2012, the film won both the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Awards for Best Screenplay; and was nominated for three other Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Art Direction. It was shown on Channel 3 on Spanish television with subtitles and won a Goya Award.
Even for people who have never been to Paris, the name of the city is more than a metaphor for magic—it’s almost a synonym. Certainly there’s no better place on earth that Woody Allen could have chosen for his new romantic comedy than Paris. It is a city with a unique mythology and heritage, celebrated for the extraordinary beauty of its streets, boulevards and gardens, as well as the splendor found inside so many of the greatest museums in the world. The resonance of its history, from major political and cultural events to the aura of its legendary restaurants and cafés, is felt everywhere. The past endures and shines brightly in Paris, which makes it well-suited for a story of a man reinvigorating his feelings and finding inspiration to reflect on his life.
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is Woody Allen’s valentine to the City of Lights, which he considers equal to New York as the great city of the world. “Of course I’m partial to New York because I was born there and grew up there,” he says, “but if I didn’t live in New York, Paris is the place I would live.” The film is the second time Allen has filmed there, after a small bit of EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU. “I get great enjoyment out of presenting Paris to the cinema audience the way I see it,” he says. “Just as with New York, where I present it one way, and other directors present it other ways, somebody else could come and shoot Paris in a completely different way. I want to present it my way, projecting my own feelings about it.”
Allen fell in love with Paris during the shooting of WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT, his debut film as an actor and writer. Much like Gil, the protagonist of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, he’s rueful about not staying there after the filming, as others on the film did. “It was an adventure that was too bold for me at the time,” he says. “In retrospect I could have stayed, or at the very minimum taken an apartment and divided my time—but I didn’t, and I regret that.”
Gil (played by Owen Wilson) is a Hollywood screenwriter who had aspirations to be a serious writer when he was a younger man. He idolized American novelists like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and wanted to be a novelist in their tradition. But somewhere along the way, Gil left that path, discovered he had a talent for writing screenplays, and fell into a well-paid routine of work that didn’t satisfy him and affluence that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. “He found himself to be a victim of that old Hollywood joke,” says Allen. “I laid down at the pool… and when I got up it was ten years later.”
As the story begins, Gil and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) are tagging along on a trip to Paris with her father, John (Kurt Fuller), and mother, Helen (Mimi Kennedy). John, a conservative businessman who has come to Paris to finalize a high-level deal, makes no attempt to disguise his disapproval of Gil, who he sees as an unreliable lightweight unworthy of his daughter. Gil’s absorption with the novel he’s writing, rather than the more lucrative profession waiting for him at home, makes him seem even more frivolous in John’s eyes.
Being in Paris triggers Gil’s memories of his one-time literary ambitions. “Gil lived in Paris when he was in his twenties and he has this romantic attachment to it,” says Wilson. “It represents the time when his professional life was just beginning, when he thought about what he was going to do with his life. That was when he came to the fork in the road. So of course being there again makes him think about that time and the road he didn’t take.”
Allen originally conceived of Gil as an east coast intellectual, but he rethought it when he and casting director Juliet Taylor began talking about Owen Wilson for the role. “I thought Owen would be charming and funny but my fear was that he was not so eastern at all in his persona,” says Allen. Realizing that not only could Gil come from California, it would actually make the character richer, so he rewrote the part and submitted it to Wilson, who readily agreed to do it. “Owen is a natural actor,” says Allen. “He doesn’t sound like he’s acting, he sounds like a human being speaking in a situation, and that’s very appealing to me. He’s got a wonderful funny bone, a wonderful comic instinct that’s quite unlike my own, but wonderful of its kind. He’s a blonde Texan kind of Everyman’s hero, the kind of hero of the regiment in the old war pictures, with a great flair for being amusing. It’s a rare combination and I thought he’d be great.”
Rachel McAdams joins the cast as Gil’s fiancée, Inez. “Inez is used to having her way,” says McAdams. “She’s very sure of what she wants. She’s in love with Gil or she thinks she is and is maybe not too inquisitive about the state of their relationship or the health of their relationship. She thinks Gil’s a good guy, a good catch and he’s stable, provided that he keeps writing screenplays and they can have a comfortable life in the States. She’s supportive of his dabbling with a novel, provided that it’s a slight preoccupation, but I don’t think she’s encouraging it as a life-long dream, something he should spend too much of his time on.” Says Allen: “Inez just wants Gil to make enough money so they can go to parties and raise children. There’s nothing wrong with her aspirations; they’re just not Gil’s.”
Allen has high praise for McAdams’s work on the film. “Rachel just gets it,” he says. “She’s funny when she has to be funny; she’s serious when she has to be serious. She’s unfailingly real, she doesn’t do anything too big or too under-acted, and she’s totally alive on the screen.” Says Wilson: “What I saw even more from Rachel’s performance was how Inez is kind of funny in the way she uses her sexuality to manipulate Gil. Rachel has a very good sense of humor and knew exactly how to play those scenes.”
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the second occasion when McAdams and Wilson co-starred as a couple, after WEDDING CRASHERS in 2005. “I was so excited to work with Owen again because we had so much fun when we worked together a few years ago,” says McAdams. “As this was a much more antagonistic relationship than the one we had in the other film, I was curious about how that would play out. So our characters aren’t getting along this time around—but we did again.” Says Wilson: “I loved working with Rachel again. She came in during the second half of filming, and I think she brought this burst of energy and got everybody renewed, got us charged up for the final push.”
While in Paris, Gil encounters Adriana (Marion Cotillard), an exquisitely beautiful aspiring fashion designer who has been the lover and muse to a series of famous artists. “Adriana doesn’t know where she belongs. She is searching for her place,” says Cotillard. “She admires artists because their world is wide and their imagination takes them to some marvelous places. She needs to dream.”
Says Allen: “There are always special women that artists painted a number of times, women that lived with the artists and provided an enormous amount of support for them. Adriana is not only lovely, she’s also very intelligent, someone who can provide a very strong artistic force for them to bounce things off, to support them when they’re down, to encourage them when they need it, and to tell them when they’re wrong. In many cases this can provide a rich partnership with the artist.”
Midnight in Paris
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Owen Wilson, Nina Arianda, Audrey Fleurot, Alison Pill
Screenplay by: Woody Allen
Production Design by: Anne Seibel
Cinematography by: Darius Khondji
Film Editing by: Alisa Lepselter
Costume Design by: Sonia Grande
Set Decoration by: Hélène Dubreuil
Art Direction by: Jean-Yves Rabier
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual references and smoking.
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: May 20, 2011
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