Coup de Chance (Woody Allen, 2023)

[therewillbeblus]

Allen (in an Instagram interview with Alec Baldwin, of all places) indicates he might retire after his next film, a Paris-set drama

More details revealed: This will be a French-language thriller in the vein of Match Point with an all-French cast. Production is expected to begin shortly

[Finch]

Woody Allen officially retiring, last film shooting in Paris, and entirely in French

[Maltic]

More drama coming up at the Cesar Awards

[HitchcockLang]

That article has since been updated to reflect that Woody is not actually retiring after all.

[Quote Perf Unquote]

That article has since been updated to reflect that Woody is not actually retiring after all.

I know I've written some silly shit on this site, which might cause many of you to think I've experienced head trauma, but this text from the updated article genuinely makes me wonder if I'm having a stroke right now:

...a representative for the director released the following statement: “Woody Allen never said he was retiring, not did he say he was writing another novel. He said he was thinking about not making films as making films that go straight or very quickly to streaming platforms is not so enjoyable for him, as he is a great lover of the cinema experience. Currently, he has no intention of retiring and is very excited to be in Paris shooting his new movie, which will be the 50th.”

[DarkImbecile]

Sounds like a Spanish newspaper rehashed comments he’d already made out of context, slapped an attention-getting headline on it, and Variety picked it up without doing any further checking or reporting.

[Quote Perf Unquote]

TMZ is better written than most of the trades at this point, and probably more accurate as well.

[Dylan]

Lots of new details have quietly leaked in regards to Allen's latest film, which is currently filming in Paris. The Woody Allen Pages have compiled the various updates into three recent posts:

Valerie Lemercier will star and is rumored to have one of the leading roles, or perhaps the leading role.

Niels Schneider, Lou de Laage, Melvil Poupaud and Elsa Zylberstein have been added to the cast.

Various crew members have been reported, including Vittorio Storaro as the cinematographer (his fifth film for Allen). This update also reports that Gregory Gadebois and Guillaume de Tonquedec have been added to the cast.

[hearthesilence]

Maybe I forgot but apparently Allen has an official Facebook page and it's been very active with someone posting images of him working from the set of his new film.

[relaxok]

Call me closed-minded but I just can’t imagine enjoying a Woody Allen film that’s not in english..

I hope this is not his last.

[MichaelB]

Call me closed-minded but I just can’t imagine enjoying a Woody Allen film that’s not in english..

I hope this is not his last.

I’d definitely have enjoyed Match Point more if it had been in French. Or indeed any language aside from my native London English.

[Michael Kerpan]

Early Woody Allen films were fun to watch visually -- and I suspect they might have worked well if made in a language other than English (though I would miss his and DK's voices to be sure).

[Maltic]

I’d definitely have enjoyed Match Point more if it had been in French. Or indeed any language aside from my native London English.

I suppose it would've been la Louvre then

[hearthesilence]

Call me closed-minded but I just can’t imagine enjoying a Woody Allen film that’s not in english..

I hope this is not his last.

I’d definitely have enjoyed Match Point more if it had been in French. Or indeed any language aside from my native London English.

The film actually brings to mind Truffaut's exchange with American reporters about Rear Window (the one in the introduction to his book on Hitchcock). I think Match Point is one of Allen's very best films, but it has little to do with his portrayal of London. That part always seemed awkward, and at least for me it isn't enough to overshadow the film's strengths, but if the cast was more free to jump in and adjust things like the dialogue accordingly, that might've been enough to smooth out those bumps. Then again it can be a little tricky for a performer to recommend script changes, especially when it's a filmmaker who's reputation rests heavily on his writing.

[ianthemovie]

I wish the cast was more free to jump in and adjust things like the dialogue accordingly. That might've been enough to smooth out those bumps, but then again it can be a little tricky for a performer to recommend script changes, especially when it's a filmmaker who's reputation rests heavily on his writing.

I recall reading that he let Penelope Cruz improvise or tweak much of her dialogue in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, partly because he said he simply didn't know Spanish well and deferred to her fluency with the language and its nuances. Maybe he'll allow his French actors to do the same. It seems like he's much more protective of his writing when it's being spoken in his native tongue.

[Roscoe]

I recall reading that he let Penelope Cruz improvise or tweak much of her dialogue in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, partly because he said he simply didn't know Spanish well and deferred to her fluency with the language and its nuances. Maybe he'll allow his French actors to do the same. It seems like he's much more protective of his writing when it's being spoken in his native tongue.

Gene Wilder said much the same thing about working with Allen, that Allen told him point blank to change any lines he didn't like.

[therewillbeblus]

I recall reading that he let Penelope Cruz improvise or tweak much of her dialogue in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, partly because he said he simply didn't know Spanish well and deferred to her fluency with the language and its nuances. Maybe he'll allow his French actors to do the same. It seems like he's much more protective of his writing when it's being spoken in his native tongue.

Gene Wilder said much the same thing about working with Allen, that Allen told him point blank to change any lines he didn't like.

That might have more to do with respecting a fellow comedian early on in his career, plus I don't believe that film's skit has much dialogue and is generally less about the written word than the concept. I wouldn't extrapolate that to his later English-friendly works that rely on Allen's specific style of writing in the script

[hearthesilence]

Interesting. I posted this earlier, but Allen actually made an appearance at Lincoln Center to promote Match Point and they uploaded a recording here.

Considering how many of his performers have turned in acclaimed performances (with a ridiculous number of Oscars and Oscar nominations), one could reasonably think there was something extraordinary about his ability to direct them, but instead he debunks that idea with his amusing explanation. It's hard to say if he's just making it sound like nothing just to be funny, but it does suggest that he's not really domineering on-set. With that in mind, in Match Point there were so many bits of dialogue that sounded off, and I'm curious as to whether any of the actors ever thought to say anything (but I guess didn't)? For example, IIRC, I don't think locals usually say "the" in front of Tate Modern.

[Roscoe]

I recall reading that he let Penelope Cruz improvise or tweak much of her dialogue in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, partly because he said he simply didn't know Spanish well and deferred to her fluency with the language and its nuances. Maybe he'll allow his French actors to do the same. It seems like he's much more protective of his writing when it's being spoken in his native tongue.

Gene Wilder said much the same thing about working with Allen, that Allen told him point blank to change any lines he didn't like.

That might have more to do with respecting a fellow comedian early on in his career, plus I don't believe that film's skit has much dialogue and is generally less about the written word than the concept. I wouldn't extrapolate that to his later English-friendly works that rely on Allen's specific style of writing in the script

There's that, sure, but Martin Landau speaks of Allen initially disagreeing with Landau's take on his role in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, describing Allen coming up to him mid-shoot and saying that Landau's more sensitive and sympathetic work had made him see the light as the shoot progressed. Now that's a matter of interpreting the role rather than the specific dialogue that Landau had to make sound as if it was being spoken by a living human being, of course. A more hands-on director might have taken issue with Landau's take from the start and taken steps to counter it, but Allen seems to have been flexible enough to let Landau go where he wanted with it.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I didn't mean to negate that this was true, just that the Wilder example extrapolated into his overall practice didn't seem like an ideal one

[DarkImbecile]

Allen’s latest is apparently titled Coup de Chance:

“Coup de Chance is a contemporary story of romance, passion and violence set in contemporary Paris. Shot all over the city and a little bit in the countryside, it evolves around a romance between two young people who are old friends and devolves into marital infidelity and ultimately crime. It stars very gifted French actors and actresses, is all in the French language and looks very beautiful as photographed by the great cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro. The rest I’ll leave to surprise.”

[HitchcockLang]

Early Woody Allen films were fun to watch visually -- and I suspect they might have worked well if made in a language other than English (though I would miss his and DK's voices to be sure).

One of the entire vignettes in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* is in Italian.

[relaxok]

With Coup de Chance getting a pretty nice response, I'm looking forward to a time when it's actually seeable somewhere - I assume it will come to streaming before there's a film release.

[therewillbeblus]

For the first two-thirds, I thought Coup de Chance was a solid if exceptionally unremarkable Woody Allen movie. While he retreads over familiar ideas, behavior, themes, genre and narrative skeletons, etc. across his oeuvre, I don't know if any of his crime-romances have felt this safely protected from creative singularity. Rifkin's Festival, while certainly cringe-worthy in many respects, was at least somewhat risky in an admirable sense (and not just the homages, but the running joke of Shawn and Gershon's coupling is more inspired than just about anything in Allen's Russian Classics in France exercise, even if he seemed to go out of his way not to capitalize on opportunities to nudge the audience into repeatedly gawking at the absurdism!)

This film is well-shot, acted, directed, and as usual, breezes by with Allen's stapled digestible tone, aided by the camera's sunny vibes of possibility and his own deft touch with words and humble focus on banal activity made interesting by simple, powerful emotion felt between two people. Yet.. every other of 'These Ones' pronounces its individuality in at least some way, and I'm sorry but the language departure doesn't supply that spin. Allen can do this on autopilot, and although I never wanted this to be 'longer', shifts in perspective -or motivations surging and then become discarded- all come on a bit quick, and even the jealousy meditations feels truncated rather than either serious or funny - and I get the sense that a close-up on Poupaud's face during a pivotal scene, as he's thinking and not listening to a voice of reason, is meant to signify one or the other. There is one wonderful bit of inspiration that throttles the narrative into the exact place it needs to be

SpoilerShow

which starts with the nonchalant, practically-finale-unveiling reveal just before the end: that Melvil Poupaud's number one crime guy (who he has ostensibly known for a long time, and used to bump off various people across decades as he built up his empire) doesn't know how to fire a gun.. And then Allen goes even further in showing the absurdity of both this reveal and the winky artifice Allen is enjoying laughing at (you can practically hear him giggling to himself as he wrote this bit, and everything else is so routine I genuinely wonder if he made the rest of the film around a shower thought like, 'oh shoot I never did this silly thing with my thugs last time') by a) having Poupaud revert to a friendly family check-in, discussing a now-suddenly-complex murder plan hand in hand with social niceties, and b) causing us to do a double-take on how he could possibly know this guy for his role as an enforcer -let alone, apparently consider him like family- without knowledge of basic skill level in that very-important-for-his-own-obsessive-success area of expertise... plus, why can't the guy learn to shoot a gun? Can someone else? This is a hasty plan - developed on emotion rather than tact - but Poupaud could never admit as much.

For a guy who represents the atheistic 'I make my own luck' mentality -the one Allen has slowly stopped identifying with and become increasingly repulsed by in his last ten years or so, from his movies at least- and against Allen's own now agnostic take on corporeal spirituality (aka unconditional, unprovoked or planned love), there's a nice dish of irony thrown in there: For someone so meticulous and obsessive and fussy, he really gets lazy and urgency is usurped by overconfidence in direct contrast to his own motto of 'putting in work, don't expect certain results', etc. And then, of course, bad luck is what kills him!

Perhaps this is what separates this film from the rest: That it continues his own evolution as he approaches the last act of his own life. We get the whole 'life is chance, so take advantage of miracles on earth' stuff, but then there's a coda message: "Don't dwell" which I read to not only mean "be more grateful," since it's already been covered. Allen is more interested in Poupaud's character for a reason. He's arguably the only actual "character" and yet he's not particularly interesting. He may actually be the least interesting 'kind of person' in the ensemble. What an interesting creative choice - to overly simplify the interesting people

SpoilerShow

and completely drop the most interesting one from the narrative early on!

but that seems to be the point. Maybe we don't need to be "characters" in life. Just look what's in front of you before it's gone, don't overthink, just be and soak up life, sing kumbaya etc. I get the sense that Allen wishes he worried less and was grateful more during his life, but not in a self-critical or regretful manner necessarily (at least that't not how it translates into his art). That would be a waste of time, dwelling. Allen certainly has experience dwelling though - and perhaps he makes movies these days in part to inspire himself not to. That's certainly part of why I practice therapy and write and create and connect with others - to re-remind myself of the clarity that exists when I get outside of the caves of 'self'. Poupaud is all "self'd up" - consumed, unable to get out of his own way, rigid in his thinking in a fashion that's unproductive towards anything Allen values anymore.

A filtered sense of security is a false one - Allen's known that for a while regarding certain ideologies and institutions - but maybe he's combining the type of person he's always loathed most (the kind who he'd fantasize about ripping apart in a movie theatre line, for example) with the qualities he sees in himself that he's never liked, and then sending that character into an arc of delusion that essentially renders the meaty love piece of the film vapid - because Poupaud is actually the central character and can't access it. I dunno, but almost everything I liked about this centered around that theme of luck and chance, and how taking advantage of opportunities in a true and inviting and collaborative sense looks more like 'letting go' than issuing more and more control to a situation. That's just fucking lonely, and ultimately absurd. I kinda wish the movie ended with the last two scenes reversed -

SpoilerShow

although it would be less optimistic (it's certainly the most 'sublime' exit he could take, if this winds up being a career cap), being reminded of the 'right' way to approach life and then being presented with the wrong way and its consequences, and the absurdism of it all: A life wasted, built on self-constructed false ideas, unwilling to truly open or give parts of oneself, or be teachable... and the mother's deadpan face, barely registering what happened.

But I guess that doesn't matter as much as the positives. I'm also less convinced that my theory is correct, since Allen is subtler about what he's doing there, though I think it's pretty obvious that the basics are there to demonstrate the clash between two polarities Allen can relate to - not that it's a novel statement since he's been doing this for his whole career, especially in the twilight years! I like to think that the absences I've discussed is Allen's way of 'letting go' further ("Giving it up to God" or whatever that means for you), leaving the characters he aligns with at this developmental stage to their own narratives outside of his films. He doesn't need to prod into their psyches or personalities too much because all that matters are the simplicities that he writes in their dialogue, clear as day. He 'gets' them now, maybe it's less interesting, or counterintuitive to the ethos, to make them more 'complex'. I like the idea of Allen surrendering his characters to a world outside, like a father sending kids off into a world on their own, confident they'll do well if they stick to the basics.

I had a good time watching this - not a great one - but a sleepily delightful one. I can't think of another filmmaker who creates movies that feel so effortless and inviting and comforting while I'm there. That counts for a lot.

[nicolas]

For the first two-thirds, I thought Coup de Chance was a solid if exceptionally unremarkable Woody Allen movie. While he retreads over familiar ideas, behavior, themes, genre and narrative skeletons, etc. across his oeuvre, I don't know if any of his crime-romances have felt this safely protected from creative singularity. Rifkin's Festival, while certainly cringe-worthy in many respects, was at least somewhat risky in an admirable sense (and not just the homages, but the running joke of Shawn and Gershon's coupling is more inspired than just about anything in Allen's Russian Classics in France exercise, even if he seemed to go out of his way not to capitalize on opportunities to nudge the audience into repeatedly gawking at the absurdism!)

This film is well-shot, acted, directed, and as usual, breezes by with Allen's stapled digestible tone, aided by the camera's sunny vibes of possibility and his own deft touch with words and humble focus on banal activity made interesting by simple, powerful emotion felt between two people. Yet.. every other of 'These Ones' pronounces its individuality in at least some way, and I'm sorry but the language departure doesn't supply that spin. Allen can do this on autopilot, and although I never wanted this to be 'longer', shifts in perspective -or motivations surging and then become discarded- all come on a bit quick, and even the jealousy meditations feels truncated rather than either serious or funny - and I get the sense that a close-up on Poupaud's face during a pivotal scene, as he's thinking and not listening to a voice of reason, is meant to signify one or the other. There is one wonderful bit of inspiration that throttles the narrative into the exact place it needs to be

SpoilerShow

which starts with the nonchalant, practically-finale-unveiling reveal just before the end: that Melvil Poupaud's number one crime guy (who he has ostensibly known for a long time, and used to bump off various people across decades as he built up his empire) doesn't know how to fire a gun.. And then Allen goes even further in showing the absurdity of both this reveal and the winky artifice Allen is enjoying laughing at (you can practically hear him giggling to himself as he wrote this bit, and everything else is so routine I genuinely wonder if he made the rest of the film around a shower thought like, 'oh shoot I never did this silly thing with my thugs last time') by a) having Poupaud revert to a friendly family check-in, discussing a now-suddenly-complex murder plan hand in hand with social niceties, and b) causing us to do a double-take on how he could possibly know this guy for his role as an enforcer -let alone, apparently consider him like family- without knowledge of basic skill level in that very-important-for-his-own-obsessive-success area of expertise... plus, why can't the guy learn to shoot a gun? Can someone else? This is a hasty plan - developed on emotion rather than tact - but Poupaud could never admit as much.

For a guy who represents the atheistic 'I make my own luck' mentality -the one Allen has slowly stopped identifying with and become increasingly repulsed by in his last ten years or so, from his movies at least- and against Allen's own now agnostic take on corporeal spirituality (aka unconditional, unprovoked or planned love), there's a nice dish of irony thrown in there: For someone so meticulous and obsessive and fussy, he really gets lazy and urgency is usurped by overconfidence in direct contrast to his own motto of 'putting in work, don't expect certain results', etc. And then, of course, bad luck is what kills him!

Perhaps this is what separates this film from the rest: That it continues his own evolution as he approaches the last act of his own life. We get the whole 'life is chance, so take advantage of miracles on earth' stuff, but then there's a coda message: "Don't dwell" which I read to not only mean "be more grateful," since it's already been covered. Allen is more interested in Poupaud's character for a reason. He's arguably the only actual "character" and yet he's not particularly interesting. He may actually be the least interesting 'kind of person' in the ensemble. What an interesting creative choice - to overly simplify the interesting people

SpoilerShow

and completely drop the most interesting one from the narrative early on!

but that seems to be the point. Maybe we don't need to be "characters" in life. Just look what's in front of you before it's gone, don't overthink, just be and soak up life, sing kumbaya etc. I get the sense that Allen wishes he worried less and was grateful more during his life, but not in a self-critical or regretful manner necessarily (at least that't not how it translates into his art). That would be a waste of time, dwelling. Allen certainly has experience dwelling though - and perhaps he makes movies these days in part to inspire himself not to. That's certainly part of why I practice therapy and write and create and connect with others - to re-remind myself of the clarity that exists when I get outside of the caves of 'self'. Poupaud is all "self'd up" - consumed, unable to get out of his own way, rigid in his thinking in a fashion that's unproductive towards anything Allen values anymore.

A filtered sense of security is a false one - Allen's known that for a while regarding certain ideologies and institutions - but maybe he's combining the type of person he's always loathed most (the kind who he'd fantasize about ripping apart in a movie theatre line, for example) with the qualities he sees in himself that he's never liked, and then sending that character into an arc of delusion that essentially renders the meaty love piece of the film vapid - because Poupaud is actually the central character and can't access it. I dunno, but almost everything I liked about this centered around that theme of luck and chance, and how taking advantage of opportunities in a true and inviting and collaborative sense looks more like 'letting go' than issuing more and more control to a situation. That's just fucking lonely, and ultimately absurd. I kinda wish the movie ended with the last two scenes reversed -

SpoilerShow

although it would be less optimistic (it's certainly the most 'sublime' exit he could take, if this winds up being a career cap), being reminded of the 'right' way to approach life and then being presented with the wrong way and its consequences, and the absurdism of it all: A life wasted, built on self-constructed false ideas, unwilling to truly open or give parts of oneself, or be teachable... and the mother's deadpan face, barely registering what happened.

But I guess that doesn't matter as much as the positives. I'm also less convinced that my theory is correct, since Allen is subtler about what he's doing there, though I think it's pretty obvious that the basics are there to demonstrate the clash between two polarities Allen can relate to - not that it's a novel statement since he's been doing this for his whole career, especially in the twilight years! I like to think that the absences I've discussed is Allen's way of 'letting go' further ("Giving it up to God" or whatever that means for you), leaving the characters he aligns with at this developmental stage to their own narratives outside of his films. He doesn't need to prod into their psyches or personalities too much because all that matters are the simplicities that he writes in their dialogue, clear as day. He 'gets' them now, maybe it's less interesting, or counterintuitive to the ethos, to make them more 'complex'. I like the idea of Allen surrendering his characters to a world outside, like a father sending kids off into a world on their own, confident they'll do well if they stick to the basics.

I had a good time watching this - not a great one - but a sleepily delightful one. I can't think of another filmmaker who creates movies that feel so effortless and inviting and comforting while I'm there. That counts for a lot.

Thanks for the detailed review, looking forward to reading it after seeing the film! As a big Allen fan I can’t wait for the film and have a hard time deciding whether to get the French BD now or wait for the Italian UHD. How did you get to see it so early and which language did you watch it in? The French BD apparently has an English dub available, which is interesting. I wonder whether Allen requested it for his English and international audiences.