Not great but not bad Woody, but his future needs to be addressed
How many even knew Woody Allen had a new movie out? Of course you didn’t. Allen is so under the radar now that it’s amazing he doesn’t shrink up and evaporate before our very eyes. For some, that’s probably just fine. But as he embarks on his 50th film, I can’t help but feel a bittersweetness about all things Allen, including my somewhat ambivalence to Coup de Chance.
Taking place in Paris, the film centers around a writer named Alain (Niels Schneider) and a former classmate he knew in New York named Fanny (Lou de Laage). The two pass each other in the street and get to talking. Alain has always had a crush on her but never said anything, so much so that his first marriage was to a woman who looked just like her. Fanny also went through a painful first marriage and was then snatched up by a wealthy industrialist named Jean (Melvil Poupaud) on the rebound.
The chance meeting has Fanny looking at her life differently- she’s not exactly sure if she’s even happy with Jean anymore and certainly not that he basically treats her as a trophy wife. She winds up having casual lunches with Alain but soon finds herself in forbidden territory back in his apartment. Jean meanwhile begins to realize something may be up and he hires a private eye to follow her.
While the french subtitles may drive some away, the decision to film this in France gives it a breezier romantic charm than if it were shot in bustling New York. de Laage makes for a beautifully alluring woman in the middle, while Schneider (kind of a bigger looking, French Justin Timberlake) has all the right whimsy as a man who believes in chance and other flights of fancy. And Poupaud strikes just the right note of jealousy and menace.
This is a perfectly diverting piece of entertainment but it’s also fairly slight, and not anywhere near his other suspenseful murder thrillers “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Match Point”. Allen’s films about infidelity are so numerous now that, while we like these characters, we’re also waiting for some nuance that makes them really stand out. And I never thought that happened, they remain fairly one-dimensional.
Perhaps if Jean was presented with more ambiguity there could have been some more investment in the last half. As is i’m not even sure if Allen is even going for suspense- it seems to have been put together with no other purpose than for him to wink at the audience with all the instances of luck and chance that occur. What doesn’t help either is the bouncy jazz musical score.
Overall, it’s a fine film but you hope it’s not the one he’s gonna go out on. But that’s becoming more and more of a possibility as it seems financing and distribution are drying up; being in the Woody Allen business has become riskier and riskier. The sadder thing is that his personal life, which was always flawed and messy, but that informed some of his best writing, now seems like it’s enveloping him.
I believe without question that he’s guilty of much in the mess that was his marriage to Mia Farrow, the majority of the allegations concerning that alone paint a poor picture and that's even after it gets explained exactly as it happened. But while I say the word “believe”, I should point out that that’s the best many of us can do here. There are a great many lies, manipulations, and vendettas from the other side in this story that make the more serious Woody Allen allegations feel all the more controversial.
Right now it’s sad enough that a great filmmaker’s body of work has fallen so out of favor with so many. The only thing that would make it worse is if all the terrible things people believe actually were proven. But until that day comes, this remains just a pathetic, sorry, not nearly good enough solution that just leaves everything hanging to the point where speculation is all we have. Everyone involved should deserve better.