Muted yet unbowed, Woody Allen releases 50th feature with Paris-set “Coup de Chance”
Robert Abele April 5, 2024
Incredibly, Woody Allen has made another movie. The
airily
lush
-looking
moral thriller Coup de Chance, about infidelity and murder in the City of Light
s
, is his 50th feature
,and
. It has been speculated
(by himeven by Allen, who is 88)as to be
his last,
(by him
even
by Allen, who is 88)
. Then again, hes had many
“
last
“
movies, if you count the actors whove said they regret working with him, the financing arrangements
that have
,
and the audiences who have given up on him as a
disgraced filmmaker, or
one
–
time creative giant running on fumes.
Coup de Chance represents an ignominious first
,
too:
, as in
the first
film
hes made since the explosive 2021 docuseries Allen v. Farrow deepened for many the credibility of the child sexual
–
abuse
charges allegations
against Allen by Mia Farrows daughter Dylan. Are we surprised
, then,
that someone who tirelessly made a movie a year for decades (
and
often one great movie after another)
, with an enviable level of artistic freedom, no less,
would ignore his pariah status and find the wherewithal
somehow, somewhere,
to keep going?
Or that France
no stranger to absorbing the arts
a place where scandal-ridden artists have long found refuge
men
would step up to give
him Allen
a picturesque backdrop, in this case for one of his murder-most-convenient tales
la Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point and Irrational Man?
So h H
ere we are again in one of Allens high-toned milieus,
with
jazz on the soundtrack
, philosophy in the bones, and godlike DP
and
godlike cinematographer
Vittorio Storaro lighting it all
, the latest in the directors long line of accomplished city romanticizers
.
Of course,
Allen has made more than a handful of films in Europe, but always with English-speaking stars.
Now that that marquee well has dried up, f F
or Coup hes turned to accomplished French actors
.acting in their native tongue
The cast is headed by Lou de Lage and Melvil Poupaud
as
playing a well-to-do couple
,
and Niels Schneider as the disruptor
— and t
. The result
, strangely enough,
at times carries the whiff of something simultaneously refreshing and nostalgic
. It’s: less an other words, less a cinephile auteurs
vacation project
,
and closer to an imagined hybrid of Dostoevsky, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol
: , in which an
inconvenient romantic spark lead
sing
to cold-blooded problem-solving.
unnamed-1.jpg
Our way in is young Parisian auction
–
house executive Fanny (
D
e Lage)
, who
run
ning s
into
her
old school pal Alain (Schneider)
, whose . His
attentive, poetry-citing bohemian charisma has her questioning the shallow society life she leads with
her
businessman
–
husband Jean (Poupaud).
Youd think shed also take into consideration something else about Jean, that b B
ehind
his Jean’s
loving, gregarious behavior
, though,
is a jealous man who likes hunting
(something Fanny should haven taken into consideration),
and is rumored to be ruthless enough to have done away with a onetime colleague. (The gossip is
merely
amusing chitchat among
st
his circle of friends, a
detailbelievable detail of tight-knit class sociopathy
one could unpack for hours in the context of Allens own infamy
and success
.)
If Coup de Chance is an exit
for Allen
, its at least a gracefully made one. To see where its heading doesnt devalue its breezy appeal as a
seriocomic
shaggy
–
dog tale
or, if youre familiar with Allens standup career, shaggy moose joke —
about regret
s
, power
,
and luck. It also benefits from a handful of
more than
solid performances,
too,
especially
from D
e Lage
s
,
which who
animates the first half, and Valrie Lemercier
s in in
the second
,
as Fannys
charmed-then-
concerned mother.
But its also
an echo of a film in the a reminder of how
lazy
way
Allens output has
been feltin during
the last decade,
when it feels
as if
the his
first draft is on the screen
,
and
the first draft of a rehash, at that. The stuff that works rarely dissuades us from the
thoughts suspicio
n that were far from what was mordantly evocative about Crimes or chillingly elegant about Match Point, dark fantasies that
easily
disprove
dthe memorably the
self-deprecating joke from Stardust Memories
when the space alien tells Allens filmmaker character that they
about
his
fans
whoclearly
prefer
ring
the early, funny ones.”
Loathe him or defend him,
over fifty films
Allen has
more thanproven his worth over the years nothing to prove anymore
.
And as “Coup” shows, he has finally become something non-controversial, at least up on screen: an artist slackening into repetition and mild inconsequence.with the ridiculous and the solemn. But the lesser-quoted very next line from that scene in Stardust, spoken by Allen as a defensive artists retort, all too queasily resonates, too, with where his life, art, and reputation would lead: But the human condition is so discouraging!
