Woody Allen's "Coup de chance": 3 good reasons to go see this romantic thriller with Melvil Poupaud and Valérie Lemercier

Solène Delinger 08:00, September 27, 2023

At 87 years old, Woody Allen can still surprise us... The American director is back Wednesday, September 27 with Coup de chance, a surprisingly successful and daring fiftieth film, after its disappointing Rifkin's Festival, released in 2020. Europe 1 gives you three good reasons to go see this new feature film by Woody Allen shot entirely in Paris with only French actors.

1. From romantic comedy to thriller

In Coup de chance, Woody Allen explores with great finesse and piquant irony the themes that have obsessed him for years, namely the complexity of romantic relationships, luck but also chance. Everything starts from a very simple story: Fanny (Lou de Laâge), a young woman as beautiful as she is brilliant, but married, meets Alain (Niels Schneider), a former high school friend, in the street just down from her work. Their impromptu reunion will quickly turn into a sweet and delicate romance, before Jean, Fanny's husband (Melvil Poupaud) learns of their affair. The romantic comedy, punctuated by Fanny and Alain's romantic dates at the Jardin des Plantes or under the sheets of Alain's small Parisian apartment, then gives way to a much darker thriller...

2. Melvil Poupaud excels as the cheated husband

And it is Melvil Poupaud who carries the entire second part of the film by brilliantly embodying the role of Jean, a pretentious and possessive husband whose world collapses the day he learns that Fanny, his beloved wife who serves him mainly as a foil in social evenings, cheats on him with Alain. Between two hunting parties in the countryside, Jean, bruised ego and anger in the stomach, calls on two Yugoslav ice cabinets to settle the case... Only downside: Jean had not anticipated that his mother-in-law (Valérie Lemercier) would get involved by improvising detective.

3. A joyful soundtrack

The strength of Woody Allen's film also lies in its jazzy music, which punctuates the strolling scenes of Alain and Fanny in the streets of Paris, talking about literature, quoting Jacques Prévert while tasting hot chestnuts. And we hear these same notes of sax and clarinet in the most tragic moments of the film... Woody Allen had justified this choice during a press conference in Lyon: "As I was shooting a French film, I wanted to pay tribute to French cinema of the 50s and 60s, like Ascenseur pour l'échafaud by Louis Malle (...) It was the time when French filmmakers called on Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet and, in general, on a more modern jazz. So that's the style of music I adopted for Coup de chance."