I’m sure there’ll be a time when Woody Allen will be feted for the great filmmaker he is. Sadly, that day will probably happen after he’s dead & gone. So in the meantime, we’ll have to make do with his latest film, Midnight in Paris. It’s tough to avoid discussing this wonderfully silly fairy-tale of a movie without spoiling so I’m not even going to try.

As he often does, Allen assembles a stellar ensemble cast. His name alone means that he has his pick of actors who want to work with him; Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Marion Cotillard, Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, Alison Pill (who is fast becoming one of my favourite actors), and Corey Stoll, in what I hope will be a breakthrough role.

Allen is too old to be the protagonist of his stories these days, so he has passed the baton to younger men; In the underrated Melinda & Melinda, it was Will Ferrell. In Midnight in Paris, the responsibility falls to Owen Wilson, who plays Gil. He is married to McAdams’s Inez. As the title suggests, they are holidaying in Paris. Gil is a quixotic fantasist, Inez is a joyless social-climber. Gil loves everything about Paris, Inez plans for them to settle in an upper-class American suburb. Gil is Democrat, Inez is Republican.

So far, so typically Allen-esque. The early stages of the film were breezily entertaining, but I’d seen this all before. Wilson can’t be blamed for replicating Allen in his performance, because that’s what’s expected of him. The same way that everyone can do a Christopher Walken impression, all actors of a certain age can all do an impression of Woody Allen from films such as Manhattan or Annie Hall. 

Gil is suffering from writer’s block, and on an inebriated midnight stroll through the streets of Paris, he alights upon a car of people who invite him to a party. Too drunk to argue, he accepts. What he doesn’t realise is that two of this party are Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald. Yes, they are the Fitzgerald’s you’re thinking of. They end up at a bar where they meet an author. A Mr Hemingway. Yes, it is the Hemingway you’re thinking of.

Gil’s confusion to how this can be happening to him is outweighed by the thrill he gets from meeting his idols. Who cares that he seems to be in Paris in the 1920′s? Especially when Ernest Hemingway has just agreed to pass your novel to his legendary agent, Gertrude Stein. Allen never explains how or why these events are possible. This is a correct & shrewd decision. After all, why was the step-mother so wicked? Why was Rapunzel’s hair so long? Why did the first two little pigs not have the good sense to build their houses out of bricks?

Whether you are willing to accept this conceit determines whether you’ll like the film or not. It probably says a lot about the kind of person you are. Are you the practical one who will look at this astral use of time-travel and no longer suspend your disbelief? Or are you a more creative sort who will revel in Gil interacting with the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Cole Porter, Luis Bunuel & Thomas Stearns Eliot – again, if you don’t recognise these names, then this film’s probably not for you.

Paris is shown in its best light, all idealised bohemia and romance. The opening sequence is a montage of the city’s most glorious touristy bits. The story focuses on a yearning to find something more worthwhile than the relentless chase for financial security. This ties in to the movie’s other main theme; nostalgia. Gil idealises Paris in the 1920′s, a time & place when ostensibly an artist could be an artiste. But what’s to say that the people of that time didn’t wish to belong to an earlier era?

Allen’s sharp screenplay is backed up by fine performances all around. With a cast like his, we shouldn’t be too surprised. Wilson deserves credit for anchoring the piece with a childlike wonder. He follows through with the premise the whole way, at no point winking to the camera. McAdams cruises as Inez, because… well that’s what McAdams does. When not at her best, she can still act most of her peers of the screen. Maybe she thought that she’d have been better suited to one of the other characters – I definitely thought so.

In what has been a pretty dire year for cinema, Midnight in Paris is the film of 2011 (so far at least, I’m holding out for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). Allen has reached a level that most artists aspire to. Free to make his stories as he wants, reference characters that won’t appeal to the broadest demographic, and not live or die on the opening weekend box-office takings. He is a cinematic treasure, and movies will be a poorer place when he’s gone.