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Have you seen the latest movie by Woody Allen, starring Owen Wilson? Midnight in Paris – to say it ‘showcases’ Paris is an understatement. For those of you who love Paris this movie will have you wanting to be right back there, strolling through the streets taking in the amazing architecture, or sitting in a little wicker chair at a cafe watching the rest of the world stroll by. For those of you who haven’t been, all I can say is that Paris is truly one of the most beautiful – and romantic – cities in the world.

It is being said that this is Woody Allen’s best movie – after focusing for so many years on his true love, New York, he has found a new love in Paris. Owen Wilson is brilliant and is a younger, much prettier version of Woody, and he brings a gentleness and thoughtfulness to the role compared with Allen’s tense and angst-ridden persona.

The really interesting thing about this movie that I just can’t get out of my mind is the central theme: that we all favour, or romanticise even, something about the past that we don’t see around us in the present. Owen Wilson’s character longs to be a writer in 1920s Paris, and a contemporary of the greats like Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Dali, Picasso and Monet. A woman he meets ‘from that time’, longs to live with contemporaries from France’s Belle Epoque. People from that time believed the most glorious time in France would be to live during the Renaissance.

Why is it that we can’t see the essence and beauty of our own time, but prefer to idealise and favour earlier times? Have you ever said “I think it would have been amazing to have lived in ….”? Even in the span of our own lifetime, it seems that we all have a ‘glory time’ when we had the most fun, were the most successful, lived the best life or whatever. Why can’t we replicate and have the equivalent ‘best time’ right now?

I won’t say any more except see the movie and enjoy a brilliant performance by Owen Wilson, but don’t miss the intense quirkiness of Hemingway or the brilliant and hilarious portrayal of Salvador Dali by Adrien Brody! Enjoy!!