Midnight in (gay & bisexual) Paris
Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen’s engaging new time-travel movie about how we tend to romanticize the past. After so many misfires, it’s a pleasure to see Allen once again in top form. Seeing this film made me realize how bereft of wit and satire most screenplays are these days. The film also assumes that the audience is sufficiently educated about Paris in the 20s and 30s to be able to understand many of the inside jokes and references. For instance, lead character Gil (Owen Wilson) suggests to film maker Luis Buñuel that he make a movie about a dinner party gone awry, and to get the joke we need to know of Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel (1962). What? A movie that assumes its audience is educated?
The lead character Gil, while sightseeing in Paris with his air-headed fiancée and her stuffy parents, is able to transport himself back to Paris in the 1920s, a time and place he obsesses over. Those flashback scenes, which allow Gil to live out his fantasy, are infused with appearances by gay and bisexual characters, some of the most influential of the twentieth century.
We encounter Cole Porter playing piano at a party in his legendary Paris apartment. Also making appearances are Salvador Dalí, T. S. Eliot, Josephine Baker and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates, the resemblance is almost scary), among others.
Bisexual writer Djuna Barnes (known for her lesbian affair with artist Thelma Wood) appears fleetingly. Gil dances with her, without knowing her name. When her identity is revealed by his friends, Gil says, “That was Djuna Barnes? No wonder she wanted to lead!”
Over the next few days I’ll post short articles about some of these characters. In the meantime, get yourself to a movie theater and escape the heat with this charmer of a film. Watch for Carla Bruni, the first lady of France, in a cameo role as a museum guide.
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