COUP DE CHANCE
Out of competition
Coup de Chance, Usa, 2023, Director Woody Allen, Starring Lou de Laâge, Valérie Lemercier, Melvil Poupaud, Niels Schneider, Elsa Zylberstein, Grégory Gadebois, Guillaume de Tonquédec, Sara Martins, Bárbara Goenaga, Running time 96′
“Sensational,” “Oscar-worthy,” according to some lucky enough to watch it in preview. Thierry Fremaux decided not to present it at the Cannes Film Festival. The time has finally come to discover Woody Allen’s 50th and perhaps last film. A few months before its release in Italian theatres (currently scheduled for early December), his Coup the chance is one the most anticipated Out of Competition titles of the 80th Venice International Film Festival, and not only because it could be the final farewell of a Master of the Seventh art. His press office already denied an eventuality, despite the artist’s advanced age (Saturday 16 in concert in Rome with his New Orleans Jazz Band). Allen said it was “a great privilege to shoot it in Paris” and “a great honour to present it in Venice”. He defined his work as “a detective film, a story of crime and punishment. With a dose of romance, of course.”
At the centre of it all, there are Fanny and Jean, seemingly an ideal couple. Professionally established, the newlyweds live in a beautiful apartment in an exclusive Paris neighbourhood and seem as much in love as when they first met. At least until Fanny’s chance meeting with Alain, a former high school classmate for whom she unexpectedly falls head over heels, beginning to date him and deepening their relationship.
The three protagonists of this triangle are Lou de Laâge, Melvil Poupaud and Niels Schneider, the central part of the transalpine cast chosen by Allen for a French-language film that could upset the Oscar race for Best International Film. It is an adventure about the pivotal role that chance and luck play in our lives. The reactions following the screening at the EFM in Berlin have already heralded it as “Allen’s best film in years”. Keith McNally has compared it to the Louis Malle of Ascenseur pour l’échafaud.
Pending the “excellent reviews” that the production expects from Venice 80, the Venice Film Festival will play an essential role in the future of this smash hit, especially for U.S. distribution. Offsetting the concern that to prevail were possible controversies, on which Vittorio Storaro, once again cinematographer for the director of Manhattan, had already spoken out: “I am outraged and indignant that Cannes has chosen not to present his latest film because of charges from which Woody has already been acquitted twice,” for a sensibility born with #MeToo that “is bringing to light real systemic problems, but is also doing a lot of unjust damage…. A witch hunt that goes beyond the bounds of common sense.”
