« Midnight In Paris »

If Match Point, Woody Allen’s last really fine picture1, was just Crimes and Misdemeanours transposed an octave younger, Midnight in Paris is a variation worthy of a Bach fugue, in which the theme of The Purple Rose of Cairo is played, as it were, inside-out. The stars align on this one: the whimsy is unforced, the cast is in perfect tune, and the script’s treatment of nostalgia, anachronism, and the ambivalent consolations of art is subtle without being clever, more wise than wiseacre. God, I sound like I’m trying to get into The New Yorker’s Goings On About Town. Playing through Thursday at the Wiltshire, East 32nd Street. Or whatever. Good flick, though, is all I’m saying.

1 Excepting, possibly, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I haven’t seen.