COUP DE CHANCE - Mark Reviews Movies

Coup de Chance, MPI Media Group

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | April 4, 2024

The long filmmaking career of Woody Allen has famously and infamously had its ups and downs over almost 60 years. He seemed especially to have lost it as of late, so it's a surprise that Coup de Chance, the writer/director's latest, feels like a minor return to form. Gone, thankfully at this point for a variety of reasons, is any sense that this is a personal project.

There's no Allen stand-in, no romance between an older man and a younger woman (a cliché for the filmmaker that became far too discomforting for some of the same reasons), and no exploration of the creative process to be found here. The only form of creativity these characters display is in lying, cheating, investigating, and murder.

It's ultimately a thriller in an admirably low-key and sometimes clever way. The main reason the film's narrative works is that it definitely doesn't seem to be setting up such a plot, but as soon as it does arrive, we realize just how much of the groundwork Allen has laid out without us even noticing.

From the title (which translates to "stroke of luck") to the very first scene, the film makes us believe we're watching nothing more than a typical sort of romantic comedy. On the streets of Paris, Fanny (Lou de Laâge) has a chance encounter with a man she hasn't seen in many years. He's Alain (Niels Schnieder), a writer based out of nowhere in particular at the moment but who finds Paris slightly more enticing than his other temporary home in London. Upon seeing Fanny again, he finds the city even more alluring.

As teenagers, the two went to a French school in New York City, where each of their fathers was employed, and after strolling down the sidewalk and catching up with each other's lives, Alain tells it straight to Fanny. He had a major crush her on back in their high-school days, and from the way his face brightens when looking at her and his eyes can barely make the effort not to look at her, it's obvious those old feelings have stuck around for more than a decade.

Alain knows Fanny is married, because she makes a point of telling him early in their conversation, but he still asks to have lunch with her soon so that they can continue the reminiscing and catching-up. She agrees, and soon enough, the two have lunch together regularly. Fanny even starts dressing more like she did in high school, after Alain mentions he found her bohemian style to be quite sexy.

Yes, something more than an old acquaintance and new friendship is happening here. Fanny lets it happen and even seems to encourage it, too. That's not only because Alain is so charming—with Schneider pulling off the difficult trick of making the character awkwardly sincere and not, as the description of this situation might sound, creepy. It's also because her relationship with her husband isn't nearly as perfect as imagines it to be.

The husband, by the way, is Jean (Melvil Poupaud), a man who has made a fortune doing a job that no one in his circle—Fanny included—actually understands. He helps wealthy people make more money, and that has made him wealthy. The mystery is important, but more to the point, Jean is narcissistically insecure, possessive, and controlling. Any deviation Fanny may make from her set schedule is a reason for Jean to ask questions, and as those deviations increase as the wife spends more time with Alain, the number and frequency of the questions increase, while the tone of them becomes more demanding.

It would probably be unfair to say what happens to cause the plot to shift, although anyone with any awareness of the existence of a thriller with a similar setup will probably figure out who does what to whom and why just before it actually happens. That's fine.

This isn't a mystery, after all, despite Jean's vague business practices and his shadowy connections to people who don't look as if they're looking for investment advice. What matters here is that these characters each possesses a reasonable and/or believable motive for what they do—Fanny for falling for Alain and taking their connection where it goes, Alain for sticking around while naïvely believing the consequences of this relationship will be their happiness and Jean eventually getting over it, Jean for hiring a private investigator and something else a bit later.

Allen invests us in the Fanny-Alain bond, Jean's rising suspicions, and the generally light-hearted approach to what basically appears to be a straightforward love triangle. The performances sell it that way, and Vittorio Storaro's cinematography in this section is filled with the natural light of Paris and the warm glow of Alain's cramped apartment. As the story turns, that lighting dims, too, full of cool blues and shadows that make Jean's dark eyes look like pits of cold, unfeeling emptiness.

The dichotomy between the two sections works, because there's an unsettling casualness to how the nasty business is done (A couple guys carrying and calmly sitting next to a duffel bag becomes downright sinister) and there's still some humor as Fanny's mother Camille (Valérie Lemercier) starts to think twice about her beloved son-in-law. The trick of Coup de Chance isn't in the plotting, which is laid bare as it happens, but in the juggling of tone, the way these characters are convincing on their own and across both halves (if they make it, obviously), and how each step is rationally, terribly logical. Until, that is, well, the title comes into play, and even that makes sense.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products