Coup de Chance
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.
- Released:
- Runtime: 96 minutes
- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Stars: Valérie Lemercier, Niels Schneider, Elsa Zylberstein, Lou de Laâge, Grégory Gadebois, Jeanne Bournaud, Melvil Poupaud, Guillaume de Tonquédec, Éric Frey, Samantha Fuller, Emilie Incerti-Formentini, Christophe Kourotchkine, Naidra Ayadi, Constance Dollé, Juliette Plumecocq-Mech, Benoît Forgeard, Laura Malvarosa, Jamel Elgharbi, Bruno Gouery, Isabelle De Hertogh
- Director: Woody Allen
Comments
- Sees All - 29 April 2024
Money, Adultery, and Murder
With COUP DE CHANCE Woody Allen is reborn as a French filmmaker, with a film made in France and in French with an excellent French cast. The story concerns Fanny, a charming and intelligent young woman who works for an expensive art auction house. She has recently entered her second marriage after an unsuccessful first one. Her new husband, who is filthy rich, adores her. (She is his "trophy wife.") And she loves him. BUT, she finds his social milieu of shallow rich people boring. Then one day, quite by chance, she meets an old high school acquaintance on the street. He confesses that he always had a crush on her and they have lunch together. He has become a writer and has lived in several interesting places. They begin an affair, which she hopes is a temporary fling. But it is not. And she does not want to leave her husband. Her husband begins to suspect something and hires a private detective to find out (in a scene reminiscent of JULIET OF THE SPIRITS). It also turns out that her rich, handsome, and charming husband is the subject of some unpleasant rumors about his former business partner's mysterious disappearance. And that is the situation. I want to avoid spoilers, but there are complications and unexpected events, not to mention a healthy dose of karmic irony. I haven't seen all of Allen's movies, but I'm sure I've seen at least 80% of them. There are vestiges here that are reminiscent of CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, MATCH POINT, and BULLETS OVER BROADWAY. Overall, I say this an intelligent and suspenseful movie that I would rate in the upper 10% of Allen's oeuvre. I was unfamiliar with the French actors; I haven't followed French cinema in at least 10 years. These people may be big stars in France, but I did not know any of them. I suspect, however, that we will be hearing more from Lou de Laage, who plays Fanny and Niels Schneider, who plays the man from her high school days. I enjoyed this film enormously, and would recommend it to thinking people. This is not a comedy or an action film. Look elsewhere if that's what you want. - Rodrigo_Amaro - 17 March 2024
Enjoyable film but Allen stills threads into known territory with some small variations
"Luckily, I ran into you..." or was it a matter of chance? In Woody Allen's latest film his obsession for the thematic of crime and punishment gets fixed with his peculiar sense of humor while exploring the possibilities and happenings of life as he questions if there are things such as luck or chance and how they can affect everything for better or worse. Nothing new under the sun, specially when it comes to Allen as he dealt in exemplary ways with those themes in the dramatic efforts "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Match Point", complex and thrilling works where love triangles are destroyed by the acts of murder and one has to live with the burden of guilt, without the one they love but reaping some benefits. "Coup de Chance" falls into that exact setting, closing a loose trilogy, but this time the humor element becomes the dominant element rather than the tragedy. Or at least, that's what Allen is trying to make us see, a potential dramatic story with a humored perspective. It works but not fully.
This time, we move from his beloved New York to Paris where we meet the perfect couple Fanny and Jean (Lou de Laâge and Melvil Poupaud), happily settled into their bourgeois lifestyle and culture and they don't have anything to worry about. But fate intervenes when Alain (Niels Schneider), a young schoolmate of Fanny appears in her life after many years without seeing each other and he reveals that he always had a crush on her. In between talks about luck and chance, as the young writer truly believes in one of those things, a love affair blossoms between them, though she detests the idea of cheating on Jean. Obvious that Jean will know about them, and there's no need to go further with what comes next.
What do we get in this conjunction of ideas? An ellegant fine drama with some weightless comedy that takes a little too long to actually get some laughter from us (even nervous ones). For the most part it was a very anxiety inducing film that I could not see much humor from it and Allen's films usually make me laugh - even the heavy dramas. It's only after Fanny's mother (Valerie Lemercier) becomes a more recurring character that the story takes off with some brilliancy and fun, as she become nosy about everything that happens in the couple's life and a background mystery revolving a friend of Jean who disappeared.
I liked that Allen finally took a clear stance on the "crime and punishment" device, as opposed to the other two forementioned films, or at least you can see that the punishment is more evident outside of being something only the criminal suffers deep down inside - plus it was funny. Don't think the whole conflict between luck or chance was so gripping or fascinating as shown in here, as there's many ambiguous things or others that don't develop at all (who won the lottery ticket?). Yet, there's so good room for audiences to analyze and observe the events that happens with those characters and have their own theories if luck or chance affects them in a positive way or not.
Besides the high anxiety feels, the other obstacles in the way which affects the film a little are that Allen didn't capture/portray French culture in an interesting manner - it's like he transports the oddities and complexities of his New Yorkers into France, so they all become very talkative but the conversation isn't funny nor so eloquent; and having Melvil Poupaud playing the antagonist right after the frightening abusive husband in "Just the Two of Us" wasn't much of a good choice. He's very good in the role, the best performance in the film, but it kills any chance of unpredictability because you know what to expect. Had Louis Garrel been chosen for that role (and he worked with Allen in "Rifikin's Festival"), we'd have something different and very unexpected. I wish Alain/Schneider had more sequences as he's such a high-spirited/loving man as opposed to the possessive and neurotic Jean and his obsession for train models.
Rumor has it that Woody Allen might not direct again - many obvious reasons. If confirmed and become a fact, it's a bittersweet swan song that stays far back on his resume and far apart from his masterpieces. It's a quite enjoyable film, it has plenty of his known qualities (for better or worse).
But, as for his recent films it annoyed me that it seemed that he always kept drinking from the very same sources of inspiration (Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams, Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, himself) as if there wasn't more novelists/playwrights to be inspired from, or human issues that he could have dealt with. That he still mantained a career despite some 30 years of personal life turbulence is pure luck and we're the fortunate ones to have the chance to see all of his works. 7/10. - waziwi - 16 January 2024
There's no luck in Coup De Chance!
One of the worst movie I watched in French and I am a French native! I have no idea how can people appreciate this awful movie with one of the worst scenario I've seen lol. The characters are poorly built and extremely badly acted, nobody is going to win an award! Poor direction, poor lighting, the only 'good' thing in it is the sets, the 'rich architecture, the rich places'. Oh, and let's not forget that jazz music that does NOT fit with the scenes whatsoever! The only real luck is if you didn't watch it haha, urgh painful watch.
I have nothing more to say about this... let me say it in French; "ce navet!" (a turnip)
