Woody Allen: “A stroke of luck” in the cinema: The thwart

Woody Allen came to Paris for his 50th film because the city had brought him luck. This is where his “Midnight in Paris” from 2011 took place. Bizarre nocturnal time travels in a taxi through a Paris at the beginning of the 20th century – an avant-garde artist city influenced by Picasso, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. The film was a huge success – the last for Woody Allen for the time being. In this film, absurdity and poetry were once again combined in a feather-light way, and of course the criticism of the American zeitgeist, whose superficiality and pseudo-patriotic militancy are repugnant to everyone. He loves Europe because of its old-fashioned leftovers.

In the last ten years, a new Allen film has been released every year, in which the now 88-year-old director has repeatedly varied the genre of urban neurotic films he invented himself. There were definitely worth seeing, such as “Blue Jasmin” or “Rifkin’s Festival”, but they somehow lacked something extraordinary (the cinematic rigor of earlier works), especially of course Woody Allen himself as the leading actor. Because you hardly see him in front of the camera anymore. But at the end of a long, extremely productive life as a director, do we seriously want to accuse Allen of now operating primarily in the mode of melancholy?

“A stroke of luck” (original: “Coup de chance”) is Allen’s first film that he shot entirely in French. But is that an advantage or a disadvantage? In the end, the film might look too much like it was shot in a foreign language for the director. In fact, “A Stroke of Luck” doesn’t entirely escape the danger of becoming a Woody Allen film in an all-too-deliberately French-Romantic style. But who isn’t willing to forgive Allen for a few clumsy details that seem to interest him less and less? For him it’s about the main line of his films, which he then realizes as quickly as possible – old men don’t have time. Perhaps experience has also taught him that the error rate does not decrease if you act more cumbersomely.

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Of course, Allen also wrote the script himself. As is well known, he doesn’t like to give that away, not even to the actors who want to know what they’re actually supposed to be playing. You’ll find out later, because you don’t get an operating manual for real life either. Is the ending predetermined by fate or pure chance?

Now we are getting closer to the topic of the film. In a wonderfully autumnal Paris (camera: Vittorio Storaro), Fanny, who works in a gallery, meets Alain on the street. They both went to school together and then lost touch. He became a writer, but success has so far failed to materialize. He has brought the manuscript of his new novel, which is difficult for him, here with him, because where, if not in Paris, can seemingly unfinished works be completed?

Something of the long-faded gesture from “An American in Paris” seems to be emerging. The two who meet by chance are in a playful mood. Let’s see what happens – isn’t it nice to pretend for once that you’re unattached and can act freely? And an affair is already brewing between them, because Alain has always been in love with Fanny, which he now confesses to her, to her amazement. How strange life is! As a viewer, however, you expected this from the first minute of their meeting.

Is everything as predictable as one might expect? No, the story that Woody Allen came up with is not without subtlety and falls back on “Match Point” ruthlessness. The life of the upper class is no less criminal than that of other organized gangs. In the off-screen we get to hear something about the self-image of these circles that it’s better not to disturb: “There’s no such thing as too sexy, just as there’s no such thing as too rich.”

This corresponds exactly to the self-image of Fanny’s husband Jean, a smart handsome boy for whom maximizing his wealth is apparently no problem. Behind closed doors, however, people tell each other at expensive parties that their business partner disappeared under mysterious circumstances some time ago. But the smart Jean had nothing to prove. When Fanny once asks him directly what exactly he does for a living, he answers Solomonically that he helps rich people become even richer. That sounds suspicious, but anyone who lives in abundance (including the erotic one with a husband and lover at the same time) doesn’t think about it.

But one day Alain disappeared without a trace and Fanny reacts offended. But then she begins to wonder what her husband could have to do with it. The story, the end of which cannot of course be revealed, turns around a few more times – but somehow the gesture of the story, which becomes increasingly crazy, takes on something unmistakably pomaded. The rhythm is wrong, the actors seem to be standing next to themselves. Where does it come from? It’s probably not because of Allen’s elegant and bitterly evil story. Only to a lesser extent due to his rather casual way of directing.

One has to say it clearly: The main trio, which is supposed to seem harmless, is actually harmless, far too harmless. There is no double bottom in their acting, no secret with Lou de Laâge as Fanny, Melvil Poupaud as Jean and Niels Schneider as Alain. They look like pretty decals that are placed in the scene, but don’t move anything themselves. That’s a shame, because it also blocks the crucial variable laid out in the book: the unpredictable coincidence of chance and necessity.

At least a philosophical dimension that places the imagined “plot” back into the temporal flow of things. Because Jean’s life maxim is: there is no such thing as chance; when things start to develop unfavorably, you take decisive action and force them back in the direction you want them to go. A doer without scruples. If necessary, he uses those who do what is commonly called “dirty work.” In this way, Jean has come far in life, has a lot of money, a reputation and a beautiful wife.

But what has he overlooked, what is thwarting his plans? The coincidence that Allen insists on here based on his life experience. Without chance, everything could be planned in advance and carried out with a lot of money and ruthless force. But it’s not, luckily!

Let’s hope that Allen makes another 51st film, perhaps with himself in the lead role again. Because there is still a worthy end to his great career, one that is really subtle and bitterly evil at the same time. But, as we learned here: Anyone who makes a plan should not lose sight of the unforeseeable effects of coincidences. Of course, you don’t need to tell Woody Allen with his razor-sharp intelligence. But who can play it?

»Ein Glücksfall«, France 2023. Director and book: Woody Allen. With: Lou de Laâge, Valérie Lemercier, Melvil Poupaud, Niels Schneider, Guillaume de Tonquédec, Anne Loiret. 93 min. Cinema start: April 11.

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