Dreaming of France -- Magic in the Moonlight

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
I knew that Woody Allen had a new movie coming out, but I had no idea that it was set in the south of France until my friend Greg texted and told me that I should see Magic in the Moonlight.
I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but I loved Midnight in Paris. I figured that, like me, Allen might have fallen in love with France. Maybe the culture helped him to relax a little and make his movies less neurotic.
Magic in the Moonlight is a far cry from some of Allen's insular New York movies with hysterical characters that obsess about small details. So maybe living in France has mellowed Allen.

The movie stars Colin Firth and Emma Stone -- two actors whose work I really enjoy. Firth plays Stanley Crawford, a famous magician. He travels to the south of France with a magician friend who requests his help unmasking a spiritualist. I think this part of the movie must have been based on Harry Houdini, who was a magician and who fought with spiritualists; spiritualists are people who claim to be able to speak to the dead.
Emma Stone plays the spiritualist character, Sophie Baker, a young woman from Kalamazoo, Michigan, traveling Europe with her mother, reading people's vibrations and talking to the dead. She is staying with a wealthy family from Pittsburgh, and the heir has fallen in love with her. Stanley's job is to unmask Sophie and break the spell.
As you can imagine, Stanley is a man committed to logic who doesn't believe in a spiritual life at all, and he becomes intrigued with Sophie's ability.
This film moved a little slowly. It didn't sweep me away the way Midnight in Paris did. I never forgot that I saw in the cinema with greasy buttered popcorn on the tips of my fingers.

The scenes set along the Cote d'Azur were lovely; the water sparkled more than Sophie's engagement ring.  Stanley's aunt lived in Provence, so the movie ventured there a few times. Although not much of Provence was visible, the feeling of Provence permeated. The light in the film helps remind you why artists like Van Gogh travel there to paint.
I don't regret seeing the movie, although it dragged a bit. I love France enough that I'll take any little gulps of it I can get.
But if you can only see one movie set in France this fall, I'd go with The Hundred Foot Journey.