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Books and Arts; New cinema; A movable feast; Woody Allen's new film is one of his best;
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be in “Midnight in Paris”, and neither is Paris. During the musical montage of city scenes at the beginning of Woody Allen's new film there are more cars than people in most of the shots. When the francophile hero, Gil Spender (Owen Wilson: superb), reminds his future mother-in-law that Ernest Hemingway called Paris in the 1920s a “movable feast”, she grumbles: “With this traffic, nothing can move.” Gil is visiting the City of Lights with Inez (Rachel McAdams, pictured), his bride-to-be, and her obnoxious parents. Inez, who has inherited her mother's acid tongue, uses it on her hapless fiancé whenever he suggests that he might be happier here than in Malibu, writing novels instead of the high-priced screenplays that have so far enabled her family to overlook his neurotic mannerisms, which strangely recall those of Mr Allen.
《午夜巴黎》中，懷舊再不是從前的懷舊，巴黎也不再是從前的巴黎了。在伍迪·艾倫的這部新電影里，開場便運用了音樂蒙太奇的手法展示巴黎街景，而在大部分場景中，車比人還多。男主角——一個法國發燒友——蓋爾·斯潘得（歐文·威爾遜：我演的棒極了）向他的準丈母娘提起，歐內斯特·海明威把二十年代的巴黎稱作“流動的盛宴”時，岳母大人喃喃自語：“堵車堵成這樣，誰也別想動。”蓋爾和他的準新娘伊內茲（瑞秋·麥克亞當斯飾）及不怎么討人喜歡的岳父母一起來到了巴黎這座不夜城。遺傳了母親一張利嘴的伊內茲總是對她未婚夫蓋爾想要留在巴黎的想法嗤之以鼻。但蓋爾卻覺得他在巴黎會比在馬里布過得更開心，因為他在巴黎可以寫些小說，而不是寫電影劇本——雖然這些可以帶來豐厚收入的電影劇本讓伊內茲一家忽略的了蓋爾的神經質，而這樣神經質的表現卻讓人不由自主地想起了導演艾倫先生。
The writer-wirector's 41st film pretends to debunk the illusions of nostalgia, but it puts the argument against “the golden age syndrome” in the mouth of a pedantic ass (Michael Sheen), who is politely cut off at the knees by a lovely museum guide (France's first lady, Carla Bruni). In short order Gil is transported in a magic cab to a smoky, underlit Paris where it is always just past midnight, some time in the 1920s.
本片是編導伍迪·艾倫的第41部影片。影片好像是要戳穿懷舊的假象，但卻安排一個老學究（麥克·辛飾）來駁斥“黃金時代癥”，而一個漂亮的博物館導游（法國第一夫人布魯尼·薩科齊飾）則不咸不淡地將其攔腰截斷。緊接著，蓋爾被一輛出租車奇跡般地送回了二十年代的巴黎，來到了一個昏暗朦朧的午夜。
Because this is a satirical comedy, the present-day characters get the best dialogue while the denizens of the golden age are reduced to clichéd one-liners about their own history-book images. Only Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill) are credibly fleshed-out, as a warning about what will happen if Gil marries Inez. Gil's adventures in the past, including a love affair with Picasso's mistress (Marion Cotillard), eventually supply him with one sensible anti-nostalgia argument (“These people don't even have Zithromax!”) but do nothing to cast doubt on the superiority of his new friends to his future family, who are unmistakably Californians. (Mr Allen's first time-travel fantasy, “Sleeper”, posited a future dystopia that is a surreal vision of California.)
由于這是一個諷刺喜劇，來自現代的蓋爾字字珠璣，而生活在黃金時代的人們則只能對自己的歷史形象開些陳腐的玩笑。只有斯科特和菲茨·杰拉德（湯姆·希德勒斯頓和艾麗森·皮爾飾）的形象是可信且豐滿的，因為他們要告誡蓋爾婚后可能發生的狀況。蓋爾與畢加索的情婦（瑪麗昂·歌迪亞飾）之間的愛情以及他穿越回過去的一系列經歷終于使蓋爾產生了一個理性的、毫不感傷的念頭——這時候竟然連阿奇霉素都沒有！——但這個念頭絲毫沒能動搖這些新朋友在蓋爾心中的地位，他們的地位甚至要比蓋爾未來的家庭（那些如假包換的加利福尼亞人）還要高。（艾倫先生的穿越系處女作——《傻瓜大鬧科學城》就為加利福尼亞虛構了一個荒誕離奇的未來。）
Instead, the discovery that each generation has its own nostalgias ends up fuelling a bittersweet farce of a plot, with side-trips to the Belle époque and the Versailles of Louis XIV. “Midnight in Paris” is a movable feast for fans of Woody Allen, and suggests that, at 75, he is enjoying a continuing renaissance.
然而，影片所傳達的“每代人都有屬于自己的懷舊時光”的思想同男主角在法國“美好年代”及路易十四時期凡爾賽宮的旅程一起，為苦樂參半的鬧劇情節畫上了一個句號。《午夜巴黎》是伍迪·艾倫為影迷們奉上的一場移動的盛宴。與此同時，75歲的導演艾倫也借此享受著一場持續的文藝復興。
