Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Opens Cannes 2011

News is just breaking that Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris is set to open this year's 64th Cannes film festival, following on from last year's festival appearance of his ensemble romantic comedy You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. It will premiere at the Lumiere Theatre on the same day it opens nationwide in France. It's perhaps a little disappointing that Allen's movie has been chosen to kick off the event with over the big spectacles and tentpoles we've had in previous years with Robin Hood and Up (especially as Allen's film was placed as middling competition fare last year) but I suppose the Paris connection (said to be a love letter to France's capital) has probably played it's part in the positioning. And well, they were never going to show Thor at Cannes were they? The official plot of the auteur's latest offers only the following:

Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy that follows a family travelling to the city for business. The party includes a young engaged couple that has their lives transformed throughout the journey. The film celebrates a young man€™s great love for Paris, and simultaneously explores the illusion people have that a life different from their own is better.

So the 41st Woody Allen film then sure sounds like the same Woody Allen movie we've seen for decades now, just with a new city as a backdrop! Not necessarily a bad thing if you are a fan of the legend. The star-studded ensemble cast features Kathy Bates, Adrian Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen and in the lead role, one Owen Wilson.

Tantalising prospect this one, what with Michael Sheen not just doing an impression of someone else- all signs look good so far. Incidentally, Sony Pictures Classics were so impressed by the talent on board they picked up the film for U.S. distribution later this year some time ago.

More on the line-up to this year's fest, which runs May 11th to 21st, as we get it... but fingers crossed Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Bruce Robinson's The Rum Diary are part of the equation!