Midnight in Paris: Americans, a Broad
Here's a trailer for Woody Allen's latest European romp, Midnight in Paris, a comedy about Owen Wilson staggering through the streets of the world's prettiest city while feeling jealous about his wife, Rachel McAdams. You see, his wife is, in typical Allenian (Allenic?) fashion, infatuated with a worldly intellectual, played by Michael Sheen (McAdams' real-life beau). What is one to do?
Well, one is to have a dependable Woody-style neurotic freakout and wander around Paris in the dead of the night, experiencing the city's glittery underbelly and flirting it up with Marion Cotillard. Cotillard is, as Vulture points out, just about the only French thing in this preview, unless you count the brief appearance of First Lady of France Carla Bruni, who has a small but much buzzed-about role in the film.
But really who cares about all that? The reason to see this movie is the scenery. Allen knows how to make a city look gorgeous — his famously lush Upper West Side from most of his movies, his austere and chilly London in Match Point, his lazily glowing Barcelona in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (see you Friday, B-town!) — and it would seem from this trailer that Paris is no exception. Yes, rather impossibly, he's made Paris look beautiful. We've seen the City of Light in his work before — Goldie Hawn and Woody shared a magic-infused song and dance on the banks of the Seine in Everyone Says I Love You — but here it is front and center, full of the eye-pop greens of gently swaying trees and the hushed purples of pigeon-colored roofs. Ah, Paris! This is what to see this movie for. A word of warning, though. Don't read this article and then see this movie, because you will never be happy living where you live ever again. Unless you live in Paris, in which case you can cram it.