Coup de Chance Review: A Parisian Noir with Philosophical Heft

Woody Allen’s 50th and potentially final film, “Coup de Chance“, thrusts us into the glittering world of Parisian high society. At its core lies a tawdry tale of infidelity – Fanny, a cultured if restless wife, rekindles an old flame with her former classmate Alain, a bohemian writer. What blossoms from a chance encounter quickly escalates into a full-blown affair. However, Fanny’s wealthy financier husband Jean will not be so easily cuckholded. Consumed by anger and jealousy, he takes a sinister route to eliminating his wife’s lover, hiring thugs to make Alain “disappear” permanently.

With its ribald premise and morally murky centerpiece, “Coup de Chance” travels fraught territory that Allen has trodden many times before. The film serves as a sobering meditation on the human capacity for callous self-preservation, no matter how cultured the milieu. Everyday people commit deplorable acts, then rationalize and compartmentalize their choices – a theme central to Allen’s celebrated works like “Crimes and Misdemeanors”.

Hovering over this competently crafted neo-noir is the continuing controversy surrounding the director himself. The producers have arranged a hearty theatrical release, one denied to Allen’s previous two films amidst the resurgence of his daughter Dylan’s decades-old allegations of sexual abuse. While never convicted, the specter of these claims tinges “Coup de Chance” with an unmistakable unease, refracting its ethical investigations through an inescapable personal lens.

An Escalating Entanglement

On a fateful Parisian street, Fanny, a cultured wife from a respected family, quite literally bumps into Alain – an old high school acquaintance from her days in New York. Sparks reignite between the two, with the charming and unassuming Alain making little attempt to mask his long-harbored feelings for Fanny. Though ostensibly happily married to the wealthy and successful Jean, Fanny finds herself increasingly seduced by Alain’s bohemian aura and sincere artistic passions.

What begins with furtive glances and clandestine picnics steadily escalates into a full-fledged affair as Fanny’s discontent with her stifling upper-crust life grows. Alain represents an intoxicating return to youthful idealism, while the pragmatic Jean comes to embody the materialistic ennui Fanny has grown to detest. Unbeknownst to the lovers, however, the ever-suspicious Jean has hired a private investigator to surveil his wife’s movements.

Upon uncovering the sordid truth of Fanny’s indiscretions, Jean’s possessive jealousy catalyzes a chilling metamorphosis. The refined gentleman sheds his civilized veneer, revealing an inner capacity for depravity that would make even the most jaded cynic blanche. In an utterly unromantic climax, Jean orchestrates the outright disappearance of his wife’s lover, employing underworld fixers to permanently “erase” the inconvenient Alain.

As Fanny grapples with Alain’s inexplicable ghosting, her meddlesome mother Camille begins to suspect foul play. Steadily piecing together clues that point to Jean’s long-rumored criminal ties, the film takes a tonal pivot from Romeo and Juliet-esque romantic tragedy toward neo-noir territory. Camille’s amateur sleuthing thrusts her into a cold-blooded criminal underworld, adding delectable thriller elements to Allen’s ensemble crime melodrama.

Polished Parisian Pulchritude

While the non-Francophone Allen may have been stymied in his ability to directly communicate with his performers, “Coup de Chance” nonetheless showcases an impeccably crafted Gallic ambiance. The entire French cast acquits themselves with aplomb, imbuing their characters with texture and nuance that elevates the pulpy plot.

As the ill-fated inamorati, Lou de Laâge and Niels Schneider cultivate an effervescent chemistry, their affectionate courtship exuding an effortless romantic ebullience. Melvil Poupaud, however, steals the show as the bourgeois bastard Jean. With his acid tongue and wolfish charisma, Poupaud personifies privileged menace – his coiled intensity portends his character’s feral capacities for savagery.

Ultimately, it is Valérie Lemercier as the cluelessly meddlesome Camille who most engagingly animates the film. Hers is a masterclass in physicalized comedy, seamlessly pivoting from slapstick buffoonery to determined resilience as her investigations lead her into genuinely hazardous territory.

The visual realization of Allen’s Parisian fantasy is, like the performances, remarkably stylish if not quite transporting. Veteran cinematographer Vittorio Storaro lenses the City of Lights in an autumnal golden haze, the moneyed splendor of the Gallic elite contrasted with the earthy, bohemian digs of our protagonists. The musical accompaniment similarly aims to contrast champagne elegance with backalley grit, complementing the tonal shifts with a vivacious blend of cool jazz, uptempo cadences and brassy inflections.

While the look, sound and feel of “Coup de Chance” exudes an undeniable sophistication, the actual textures of its ostentatious Parisian setting retain a vague alienation. Like tourists ensconced in opulence, we’re kept at a discreet remove from any sense of genuine urban grit or authenticity. Allen’s stylized, near-parodic treatment of Gallic high society could very well be read as a rebuke to its own rarefied insularity.

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Moral Ambiguities and Philosophical Ponderings

At its shadowy core, “Coup de Chance” dissects that most unsettling of existential dilemmas – how the most aysmmetric acts of immorality can be committed and rationalized by even the most outwardly civilized among us. In Jean’s unflinching decision to make his wife’s lover “disappear”, Allen presents an ordinary man of means suddenly unmasked as a venal, narcissistic sociopath.

Yet Jean’s transgressions are a mere amplification of common male insecurities and male privilege run rampant. His toxic possessiveness over Fanny’s affections stems from an innate sense of masculine entitlement, while his murderous solution is enabled by the unchecked power and insularity of wealth. In this regard, “Coup de Chance” operates as a searing feminist statement – a portrait of female autonomy smothered by patriarchal barbarism.

Juxtaposed against this grim morality play is Allen’s trademark fixation on existential whimsy. The film’s very title references the central philosophical tension between the roles of chance and human determination in dictating life’s outcomes. Is one’s fate a product of capricious random occurrences, or a series of choices for which we are ultimately the masters? Alain the bohemian firmly subscribes to the former, while Jean’s self-made parvenu embraces a more rationalist sovereignty over one’s own destiny.

This dialectic chimes with the themes that have permeated Allen’s career-long artistic wrestlings – the pessimistic determinism of “Crimes and Misdemeanors” giving way to the amoral pragmatism of “Match Point.” In “Coup de Chance,” he seems to propose a more holistic integration of these perspectives – that the randomness of chance seamlessly intertwines with the human capacity to steer outcomes, for better or worse.

Seen through this philosophical lens, Jean’s remorseless actions could be interpreted as a twisted affirmation of self-determination overpowering circumstantial happenstance. Much as Allen’s “crimes” have been defensively framed by the artist as mere injustices of chance, Jean imposes his singular agency to quash any perceived threats to his domestic supremacy. It’s a darkly compelling proposition – that immorality, like genius, represents the purposeful human will ascendant over the chaos of external forces.

A Shadow Looming Over the Lens

For all its deft stylistic embellishments and philosophical pretensions, “Coup de Chance” cannot fully escape the looming specter of the personal allegations that have tarnished its creator’s legacy. On one level, the film operates as a thinly veiled self-reckoning – Allen’s funhouse mirror refracted through the story of an aggrieved mother-in-law seeking justice against a powerful patriarchal figure.

Valérie Lemercier’s tenacious Camille is a clear avatar for Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow, whose implacable belief in her daughter Dylan’s accusations initially instigated the director’s societal downfall. That Jean is portrayed as a man whose casual criminality avoids substantive consequences adds an unmistakable undercurrent of self-pity to the proceedings.

And yet, this engagement with Allen’s personal demons, intentional or not, lends “Coup de Chance” an unsettling psychodramatic power. We cannot untangle the intellectual abstractions from the uglier human specifics that spawned them. The result is a film that asks us to ponder whether abhorrent actions, once metabolized through the kaleidoscope of art, can be recontextualized into something rich and probing, or if some stains are too indelible to be obscured.

Enigmatic Eminence

As the putative culmination of Woody Allen’s latter-day European dalliances, “Coup de Chance” ranks among his more assured and compelling recent efforts. While not approaching the giddy artistic heights of vintage classics like “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan”, it recaptures a zest and purposefulness too often lacking in Allen’s recent misbegotten stabs at frothy comedy.

In marrying his trademark penchant for moral/philosophical inquiry with the trappings of a deliciously lurid neo-noir plot, Allen seems to have struck an effective groove. The thriller elements establish narrative urgency and tangible stakes amidst all the navel-gazing, while the ideological musings prevent the descent into garish pulp. It’s a potent synthesis of Allen’s dueling creative impulses – the unflinching cerebralism coexisting with a prurient satirical mischief.

Yet for all its accomplished tightrope walking between smarts and salacious thrills, there persists a nagging feeling that “Coup de Chance” tours a milieu and interrogates quandaries that the director has explored with diminishing returns across his last dozen films. We’re left to wonder whether Allen is valiantly doubling down on his core artistic preoccupations, or is simply trapped in an ouroboros-like cycle of self-referential navel-gazing, unable or unwilling to seek pastures anew.

Still, as potentially Allen’s swan song, “Coup de Chance” stands as a masterful amalgamation of the idiosyncratic thematic and stylistic proclivities he’s honed over six decades of filmmaking. If this is indeed his cinematic finale, it’s both a graceful encapsulation of his oeuvre’s transcendent highs and obtrusive creative stasis. For moviegoers able to disentangle the art from the artist’s personal controversies, it’s a worthwhile and haunting coda.