-When Woody Allen talks about the directors he seeks to emulate, imitate, or merely copy from, the names he is likely to mention are Ingmar, Federico, and maybe Jean (as in Renoir). Notwithstanding his well-publicized penchant for the giants of midcentury European cinema, Allen also owes a major debt to a far less pretentious (and, in truth, a far more entertaining) filmmaker: Alfred Hitchcock. [2]
-No, Allen has never made a thriller centered on birds or a horror picture about a crossdressing killer. Yet, throughout his films, murder and thoughts of murder are surprisingly common. To wit, no fewer than five major Allen dramas center on protagonists who commit, or conspire to commit, murder and are able to justify the most horrible of crimes: Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, Cassandra’s Dream, Irrational Man, and the new Coup de Chance. These films are artful and suspenseful in the Hitchcock manner. [2]
-Allen’s movies have often displayed an obsession with the nature of evil, a fascination with those who are able to do evil and go on living normally—whose powers of compartmentalization, rationalization, or simple self-righteousness are stronger than their scruples. “Coup de Chance” is only one of the more brazen films in this vein. [3]
-Unfairly derailed by obvious, headline-demanding personal problems, Woody Allen’s phenomenal career returns to where it should never have paused in the first place with this languidly paced but endlessly mesmerizing combination of domestic-crisis love story and suspense-layered murder mystery—his first (and best) film in years. Set in the upper-class echelons of Paris and written, acted and filmed entirely in French, the title Coup de Chance translates as “stroke of luck,” and that’s exactly what it is, restoring the masterful filmmaker to his deserved position as one of the screen’s most profound storytellers. [5]
-He’s now 87, and when it comes to comedy it really has begun to feel like he’s a squeezed-out lemon. But drama! That may be another story. As you watch “Coup de Chance,” you can see that the characters occupy a milieu familiar from Allen’s beloved Manhattan (sprawling tasteful apartments, a kind of flip chattering-class effervescence), but they don’t wax on about the meaning of life and the decay of contemporary culture and all those other once-vital, now-creaky Allen obsessions. They’re actually happier than that. It’s a relief, and a pleasure, to see him write a script that isn’t rooted in “neurosis,” that’s full of vibrant players who keep surprising us. [7]
Two young people's bond leads to marital infidelity and ultimately crime. Fanny and Jean have everything of an ideal couple: fulfilled in their professional life, they live in a magnificent apartment in the beautiful districts of Paris and seem to be in love as on the first day. But when Fanny crosses, by chance, Alain, a former high school friend, she is immediately capsized. They see each other again very quickly and get closer and closer.
-After years of admiring foreign films, Allen has actually made one. Not only was this movie shot in France, it’s almost completely, truly French, beginning with the cast and dialogue. There are English subtitles throughout, but miss the opening credits and you’ll think you’re watching some small, indie import. Which, to all intents and purposes, you are. [13]
-Woody says he made the film in French “as a strict gift for myself, an indulgence. I always wanted to be a European filmmaker.” [20]
-The foreign language (one in which Allen is not fluent — his original script was translated for filming), the absence of the kinds of American stars that typically crowd Allen’s casts, the low-key reception with which this milestone has been greeted: All suggest the awkwardness surrounding this new release by a filmmaker as distinctive as he is polarizing. [4]
-Curiously, the fact that everyone is speaking French has a transformative effect on the Allen aesthetic: When read in subtitles, Allen’s dialogue suddenly sounds fresh and new. And, just as important, none of the people speaking it are tempted to imitate Woody, something that has been a problem with, for example, John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway or Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity or Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris. To this extent, exile has done Allen some good, and he is no less at home directing French-speaking actors than Francois Truffaut was directing English-speaking actors in Fahrenheit 451. [2]
We'd like to be able to control everything but in reality we have very little control.
-“Coup de Chance,” the new Woody Allen film that premiered today at Venice, completes what we can now call Allen’s “Killer Inside Me” trilogy. It’s another drama involving an act of murder instigated by a character who strikes us as too civilized and “normal” to do such a thing. But even as Allen offers another variation on the theme, he has made a movie that’s as different from the other two as they were from each other. Set in Paris, “Coup de Chance” was made with a cast of French actors (the movie is in French, with subtitles), and it’s rooted in a jaded Continental knowingness about matters of love, marriage, adultery…and getting rid of the people who are gumming up your life. The film has a jaunty tone of deadpan glee, abetted by its soundtrack of ’60s jazz nuggets, notably Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island.” It’s not a comedy, but as you watch it you can almost see Woody Allen standing off to the side, chuckling at the human folly he’s showing you. [7]
-Minus the opening credits and certain trademark elements — jazzy score, moneyed setting, themes of murder and luck, dry cosmopolitan banter — a typical viewer could watch the movie without knowing it is the 50th film directed by Woody Allen. [4]
-This is a story fueled by luck and chance; both the guiding devils on Fanny and Jean’s shoulders. As Jean states, rather ironically, “We make our own luck.” While this drama morphs into a thriller that would make Claude Chabrol smile, small bits of humor find their way in, as only Woody Allen can craft them. It is here where comparison to his 2005 masterpiece, Match Point, is found. As with that film, this is deadly serious stuff, but the filmmaker finds a macabre playfulness in its final act that produces some wicked smiles. [12]
-“Coup de Chance” means “stroke of luck.”
-Principal photography began in October 2022 in Paris, France. [19]
-Coup de Chance premiered in September at the Venice Film Festival to a seven-minute standing ovation and protests outside. [4]
-Coup de Chance was financed in Europe, whose backers have not been disclosed.
-This is Woody Allen's first movie where the main language is not English, and the second one shot entirely in France after Midnight in Paris (2011), even though parts of Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and Café Society (2016) were shot in France as well. [1]
-Woody Allen intended to shoot this film in Paris in summer 2020 but was prevented from doing so by the Covid pandemic. [1]
-The movie was shot under the production name WASP22, for Woody Allen Summer Project 2022. [1]
-Letty Aronson, Allen’s sister, who has produced his films since 1994. “I’m happy that it’s opening,” she added. “Woody is only interested in the creative part — once that’s done and he makes the film, he never sees it again. If you told him it wasn’t opening in the United States, it wouldn’t matter to him.” [4]
-While several of Allen’s regular recent collaborators are still working with him — such as costume designer Sonia Grande, editor Alisa Lepselter, and legendary DP Vittorio Storaro (using digital for the first time here to capture stunning autumnal landscapes) — they’re joined not just by an all-French cast but also some local craftspeople, like production designer Veronique Melery. The result is a smoothly efficient but oddly anonymous work that looks like it was made by a French director who is a superfan of Allen, but not really Woody himself. [8]
-The actors delivered their lines in French but communicated with Allen in English. [20]
-Let’s address the elephant in the room first: Woody Allen hasn’t made a great film in years. Opinions vary enormously, of course, on which one was the last top-notch effort: Some would go to bat for, say Blue Jasmine (2013), while others defend Match Point (2005). Many others reckon that Husbands and Wives (1992) was the last gasp of greatness before it all started going bumpily downhill. [8]
-And of course there are those, especially among younger filmgoers who didn’t grow up with Allen as a kind of mascot for American East Coast Jewish identity, who just don’t get what the fuss was ever about — and/or why the olds so want to defend someone who has been accused by his daughter Dylan Farrow of sexual abuse, even if charges were never brought against him. [8]
-“Coup de Chance,” the latest from Woody Allen, looks and plays like many of his recent movies, only better; it sounds like them, too, except that it’s in French. Set entirely in France, it features well-heeled, loquacious narcissists who circle one another in a comic-dramatic story that touches on existential worries and folds in lightly jaundiced observations about life. -There are pretty people and handsome homes, repressed lives and unleashed desires, the usual. As is often the case in Allen’s movies, there’s also an act of infidelity, which presents a dilemma, if not an especially torturous one. The jokes are fairly muted; some are funny. [10]
-The question that must now be asked is: Will Woody Allen get lucky with “Coup de Chance”? He has made what is easily his best movie since “Blue Jasmine” (10 years ago), maybe since “Match Point” (18 years ago). It’s his 50th feature, and he is saying it may be his last. Should it be released in America? As a culture, I wouldn’t be too surprised if we found ourselves debating whether the time has come to give Woody Allen, as a filmmaker, another coup de chance. [7]
-Closing in on his 88th birthday, Woody Allen likewise appears to be running out of time. His creative juices have flatlined, scandal has made him a pariah, and the Venice organizers drew fierce condemnation for even including him on the programme. And yet, undeterred, he’s still rolling the dice on his musing tales about happenstance and happy accidents, relocating to Europe and working with French actors, like a failing gambler who hopes that a new casino might bring a change in his fortunes. Obviously the lotto ticket’s a bust; that was simply too much to ask. The real shock, though, is the film. It turns out to be the best one he’s managed in a decade at least. [18]
-In the end, there isn’t much particular about Coup de Chance that renders it a particularly fitting (or even particularly ignominious) farewell, save the literal end, with a closing line – what the hell, I’ll spoil: “Best not to dwell on it.” – that lingers, in the head and on the actual screen, like either a cosmic punchline or a brusque dismissal of everything that keeps us up at night. It seems likelier that a 51st Allen movie will come together or not through fate, rather than the “showing up” to which he once attributed the majority of success. His last three movies have all felt like stopping places, for overlapping but different reasons, none of them especially flattering – and the possibility that each one may be his last has been instrumental in drawing me to watch them and write about them. I may have written something like this before. [9]
-But then, maybe that’s appropriate for an artist who knows a thing or two about repeating himself, nonetheless aware that the result isn’t always the same. It may be difficult to take Allen at his word about any number of things for any number of reasons, but I do believe him when he’s claimed, during these later periods, to still feel engaged with his ideas, regardless of how rough-drafty they feel to those of us who have seen 20 or 30 or 40-plus of his movies. At the same time, I wonder if a part of him, characteristically fearful of the ultimate end, shares with some of his audience a mix of compulsion and dread. Or if, in spite of that fearfulness of death I’ve so identified with over the years, we – filmmaker and audience – harbor another suspicion: That all of this, his half-masterful, half-ignoble, heavily asterisked body of work, will be easier to take when it’s actually over. [9]
-Allen’s 50th film may not even prove his last. A new movie, Aronson said, “is in the process of being negotiated.”Aronson added, “Woody is working on a script. So we’ll see what happens.” [4]
-How Allen continues to conduct his career is obviously his business alone. But if he were ever minded to collect his winnings and quit the table, his 50th feature might be a decent film to go out on. Coup de Chance is variously funny and sad, energetic and easygoing; a stumbling but satisfying autumnal drama that wanders amid the fading light and the golden leaves. For good measure, Allen even throws in an ending which stirs the memory of the classic moose-hunting routine from his old 1960s standup days; a rueful, airy aside that serves to bring the man’s career full-circle. [18]
-In an interview with AirMail, Woody said about if he has another film left in him, “I’m on the fence about it. I don’t want to have to go out to raise money. I find that a pain in the neck,” he says. “But if someone shows up and calls in and says we want to back the film, then I would seriously consider it. I would probably not have the willpower to say no, because I have so many ideas.” [20]
I feel like having children and all I have is anxiety.
Best not to dwell on it.
-Rex Reed for the Observer wrote: “'Coup de Chance' restores the masterful filmmaker to his deserved position as one of the screen’s most profound storytellers.” [5]
-Leonard Maltin wrote on his website: “Would anyone pay particular attention to a French import about love and deception without well-known stars if Woody Allen’s name weren’t attached to it? Perhaps not, but since this is his work—recognizably so—and it shows a sure hand guiding the proceedings, it is worth seeing, and marking as his fiftieth film. I, for one, am looking forward to his next.” [6]
-Owen Gleiberman for Variety wrote: “‘Coup de Chance’ Review: Woody Allen’s Drama of Upper-Middle-Class Murder Is His Best Movie Since ‘Blue Jasmine’ (or Maybe ‘Match Point’) [7]
-Alex Beam for the Boston Globe wrote: “The American movie industry has essentially benched him. But I think Allen is a brilliant writer, and “Coup de Chance” is strikingly beautiful.” [11]
-Anthony Francis for the The Movie Revue wrote: Make no mistake, this is a very good picture and a French soufflé of moral “crimes et délits”. [12]
-Glenn Kenny for Rogerebert.com wrote: “Coup de Chance” is a tight and effective French-language thriller that is also, among other things, the world’s longest mother-in-law joke. It’s been quite some time since Allen made a picture this good. [14]
-Natalia Winkelman for the Boston Globe wrote: “The film’s closing is abrupt and maybe too tidy, but “Coup de Chance” is still a clever little thriller. It displays an admirable economy of storytelling, and its jazz-heavy soundtrack helps maintain a jaunty mood.” [15]
-Micheal Atkinson for the Village Voice wrote: “Allen’s film doesn’t contain a single dialogue exchange that isn’t sodden with obvious exposition, a single character who isn’t a cliche, or a single performative moment that doesn’t feel like a hurry-it-up table read. The 88-year-old director has become his own storytelling chatbot.” [16]
-Peter Travers for ABC News wrote: “This French bonbon, Woody Allen’s best reviewed film in years, is no career landmark. But its blend of humor and homicide shows Allen, 88, still moving forward, creating the kind of film he made his name on, the kind that makes you laugh till it hurts.” [17]
-Coup de Chance has a 81% Rotten Tomatoes rating as of June 9, 2024.
