Pfirst round of applause. It is worth double since it is the 8.30 in the morning screening when energies are scarce. He took it Coupe de chancethe last film (literally, but it would not be the first author who eats a farewell to the scene) by Woody Allen.
Thin film like a mille-feuillesbut with as many layers, Fluke (or bad luck, it depends on your point of view, because even a lottery ticket can hide a pitfall), introduces us once again to the world of happy few (rich, intellectual, spoiled) on which the New York director based a large part of his story long 50 films, started in 1969 with Take the Money and Run.
Change of course not irrelevant, this film is filmed in Paris and in the French language. The bourgeois of Coupe de chanceif possible, have one more element of perfidy, all Europeanwhich Allen doesn’t think is true to underline (“Without gossip we should be satisfied with the sad reality of life”).
A scene from Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance.
Chaos, fuel of our lives
More than the power of chance, Allen has always reasoned around that of chaos, true fuel of our lives. And those of Fanny (Lou de Laâge) and Jean (Melvil Poupaud) they are no exception. He works “to make the rich even richer” and has “a Gatsby coté”, she, their friends malign, is “a trophy wife”. But their marriage is booming, they have a beautiful house in Paris and one in the countryside, where he enjoys deer hunting (attention, the deer is the totem animal of this exhibitionalso in Evil doesn’t exist by Ryusuke Hamaguchi has a crucial role).
Woody Allen between Valerie Lemercier and Lou de Laage. (Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti The Venice Biennale)
He had never met on the street an old high school friend (Niels Schneider), Fanny would have continued the happy and unaware menage with Jean (who has a room with little trains and tells her that «too sexy doesn’t exist, it would be like saying too rich»). But chaos always wins the lottery of life. Which, Allen reminds us, “is a big sinister farce”.
Valerie Lemercier, funny as Diane Keaton
Have no fear, the film makes you laugh tragically (especially when Valerie Lemercier enters the scene, with the air of an investigator, like Diane Keaton did in Mysterious murder in Manhattan), at a certain point the wheels of the gear begin to spin quickly, and elicits applause (at which moment of the film will cinemagoers find out in a few months).
Chaos plunges human beings into situations from which they do not know how to extricate themselves, blind like Oedipus in The goddess of love, reckless like the tennis player of Match Points, but sometimes it also ends up saving them. The problem is that good and bad end up on the raft in equal measure.
Ninety-year-old young directors
It remains to understand Why Coupe de chance has not been entered in the main competition: Woody Allen, who certainly doesn’t get all the movies right (the terrible “Italian” film To Rome with Love or the other “French” film Midnight in Paris they were very unsuccessful), with Coupe de chance shows that you can also age very well.
Woody Allen. (Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti The Venice Biennale)
As Frederick Wiseman, 93, in Venice with Menus Plaisirs, out of competition, or Ken Loach, 87, who with The Old Oakseen in Cannes and which made us cry, said goodbye to the cinema (maybe he thinks again). Exits the club, with great regret, Roman Polanski. His The Palacepassed on the Lido two days ago out of competition, is a sad faux pas.
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