"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.
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.