After
Woody Allen’s early, zany comedies made between 1969-1975, the filmmaker began
making personal works more akin to those of European auteurs. Art-house
pictures, really. He seemed to have taken his cue from the likes of Ingmar
Bergman, certainly, but also Federico Fellini and others. To this reviewer, though,
Allen’s movies, be they comedies or dramas from Annie Hall (1977)
onwards, almost always deal with the fragility of flawed human relationships—the
same kinds of pictures made by French director François
Truffaut. Truffaut’s films are full of extramarital affairs, love gone wrong,
and sometimes the murder of someone who has gotten in the way of a central
character’s goals.
Now,
Allen’s 50th motion picture, Coup de chance (“Stroke of
Luck”), shot in France with a French crew and cast, and with dialogue entirely
in French (with English subtitles), demonstrates that the director really has
become Truffaut and made his own little European art-house picture like The
Soft Skin or The Woman Next Door (two of Truffaut’s dramas). Or is
it just another Crimes and Misdemeanors or Match Point or Irrational
Man, to name some of Allen’s own dramas that deal with the same subject
matter?
Even
though much of the new film is very familiar Woody Allen territory, Coup de
chance is undoubtedly his most engaging piece since, say, Blue Jasmine.
Is it as good? Not really. And it doesn’t touch Match Point, which is
easily one of the director’s greatest thrillers, which Coup de chance attempts
to be.
Fanny
(the radiant Lou de Laâge) is married to wealthy Jean (the handsome
but appropriately cold Melvil Poupaud). They live in Paris and enjoy an
upper-class, privileged life due to Jean’s work as some kind of financier (“He
makes rich people richer,” Fanny explains). Fanny works at an auction gallery
but is somewhat bored by the couple’s high society social life and especially
by Jean’s continual insistence of going to the country to hunt game with his
friends. Every so often, Fanny’s mother, the wise but somewhat fussy Camille (Valérie
Lemercier), comes to visit for a few days. Camille gets along well with Jean
and even enjoys going hunting in the country with him and his pack while Fanny
stays at the cottage with a book to read. One day on a city street during her
lunch break, Fanny, by happenstance, runs into a former high school
acquaintance, Alain (Niels Schneider). Alain, a divorced writer, immediately
gushes how he had a crush on her back then and would enjoy taking her to lunch.
Fanny agrees. And then she agrees again. Before long, Fanny and Alain are
having an affair. Jean, however, is the jealous type. Extremely so.
To
reveal more would spoil the rest of the story, but most viewers of Woody
Allen’s films can likely predict how it’s going to go. There is an unusual
twist in the third act… and indeed there is a “stroke of luck” that occurs
which emphasizes the film’s themes of coincidence, luck, and fate and how these
concepts can be intertwined. These were common ideas that Polish director Krzysztof
Kieslowski imbued in his pictures, too.
Allen’s
direction here is top form and he is aided by the editing of Alisa Lepselter.
The film moves at a rapid pace with brief vignette-like scenes. The actors are
all superb, despite working with roles that unfortunately do not have much
depth in such a picture of brevity and briskness. The photography by veteran
Vittorio Storaro is gorgeous, and the imagery makes one want to plan an
immediate trip to visit Paris.
The
problems are that we’ve been down this road too many times with Woody Allen.
Yes, there are a few differences in the structure and storytelling, but the
familiarity still nags at the viewer. The novelty of an Allen picture being
entirely in French and in Paris does distinguish it from the others… but then
there’s the issue of whether or not American audiences will relate to these
upper-class French people or care about them at all. (One might have the same
argument about Allen’s portrayal of upper-class New Yorkers in previous
movies!) Another issue is the overuse of upbeat, lively jazz music (mostly
Herbie Hancock’s “Canteloupe Island”), which in some scenes feels highly
inappropriate for a thriller, and ultimately becomes tiresome.
That
said, there’s no question that Coup de chance is an improvement over the
last few Woody Allen titles, but it likely will not be included among the
fifteen to twenty of the filmmaker’s most respected works. But when there are
fifty titles from which to choose, landing somewhere in the middle isn’t bad.
Will
there be future pictures from Allen, who at the time of writing is 88 years old?
Who knows… but if he goes out with Coup de chance then it will be considered
an admirable effort.
