Woody Allen’s latest offering is an invitation to live and love in the romantic city of Paris. From the opening montage showing various beautiful parts of the city from morning to evening, through sunshine and rain, Allen’s unashamed adoration is the driving force of a film which serves as a love letter to both a city and an era.

This is a fantastical film, full of joy in a time of fashionable cynicism. Whilst some elements are lacking in development (it’s unclear how Gil and Inez ever got together, since they are so incredibly wrong for each other), Wilson’s wide-eyed amazement and enthusiasm for everything around him is so infectious that it more than makes up for that. Joining him as he experiences everything Paris has to offer is an absolute pleasure. His encounters with Adriana, an almost too beautiful fashion student from Bordeaux (portrayed enchantingly by Marion Cotillard), are so heartwarming and genuine that you will leave the cinema smiling to yourself.

Attention must also be paid to the score; Cole Porter’s “Let’s Fall in Love” plays throughout and is the perfect accompaniment to such an optimistic and "joie de vivre" tale. Sidney Bechet’s “Si tu vois ma mère”, introduced in the opening credits and with us until the very end, is equally integral to the mood of the film; it is Paris.

An ode to the roaring Twenties,  is both a refutation of the tempting notion that a past age might have been the time to live in, yet, is also in itself a truly golden moment.