Review: Midnight in Paris (12A) ****

Gil has a problem. In fact, he has several. He wants to live the life of a ’20s artisan in Paris, lapping up its atmosphere, and history while fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) can’t wait to get back to California. In between there is the issue of Paul (Michael Sheen), a know-all academic who Gil prefers to ignore even though Paul clearly only has eyes for Inez.

Strolling home from a wine-tasting session, Gil becomes lost and finds himself with a bunch of ebullient partygoers. His new friends turn out to be F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.

Soon Gil is rubbing shoulders with the cognoscenti of Paris in the dim and distant Twenties, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel. His novel-writing skills are impressively increased, not least via his meeting with Adrianna (Marion Cotillard), who becomes his muse…

This gorgeous time-travel romance from Woody Allen allows Gil to live out his dreams and fantasies.

It wallows in nostalgia for a lost era, and hints that looking to the past is not always the answer to modern woes.

Wilson’s performance echoes Allen as he drifts through a bewildering array of famous writers, painters, filmmakers and sundry artistes. Wilson’s delivery is redolent of Allen at his best, neuroses and anxieties and all.

Slipping between two times allows Allen to experiment with the notion of what life requires in order to be acceptable. The message is to take what one has now; looking back to a far-off golden age only leads, inevitably, to disenchantment.

Wilson makes for an engagingly baffled hero and enjoys himself with a gallery of familiar faces in smallish roles that includes Kathy Bates (as Gertrude Stein), Carla Bruni (as a tour guide) and Adrien Brody (as a wild-eyed Salvador Dali).

After a succession of mediocre offerings, many of them lacklustre thrillers, Midnight in Paris takes Allen back to something representing greatness. It may well be his best film in a decade.