While on a getaway with his annoying fiancé Inez (McAdams) in Paris with her family, struggling writer Gil (Wilson) gets transported to the 60s where he meets past great writers and figures including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. Catching his eye in that past era is free-spirited dancer Adriana (Cotillard), who shares the same lust for life and sense of romanticism as he does. Gil has to decide to elope with Adriana in the past or remain in the present with Inez.
Despite being peppered with hilarious one-liners including “A man in love with a woman from a different era—I see a photograph! No, I see a rhinoceros!” and “Sex and alcohol. Fuels the desire kills the performance, according to the Bard,” the film feels caricatured. Wilson also doesn’t quite embody the neuroticism that is the real Woody Allen. Plus, we’ve seen way better films from the master of self-depreciation himself.
The love factor:
Paris provides the perfect backdrop to this existential rom-com for viewers to fall in love with. Aren’t we all suckers for old-school romance? Plus, the budding relationship between the two leads is believable, never mind the film’s fantastical premise.