Essay
France kept watching.
Woody Allen’s films have often found a warmer reception in France than in the United States. Cannes premieres, French box-office figures and the response to films such as Midnight in Paris and Coup de chance show a relationship that lasted well beyond his early successes.
The reception
What the figures and reviews show
Café Society opened the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and drew close to one million admissions in France. Culturebox called it one of Allen’s best films since the turn of the century, while L’Humanité described it as a successful romantic tale.
Midnight in Paris provides another clear example. The film holds a 93% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, Le Figaro called it “magical,” and French users gave it 4.2 out of 5 on Allociné. The film’s Paris setting helped, but the response also continued a French interest in Allen’s dialogue, romantic complications and uneasy characters.
French audiences
What viewers noticed
French comments on Allen’s later films often focus on the settings and photography:
“Un bon Woody Allen, agréable à regarder avec de très belles images de la French Riviera des années 20… humour et dérision.”
— Isabelle E.C., Allociné“L’image est soignée, les décors… Paris parfait, idéalisé… j’ai vraiment aimé l’esthétique.”
— Onir, Allociné, on Coup de chance
Both comments are specific about what worked: the French locations, the period detail and the look of the films. They describe pleasure in what is on screen without turning that response into a claim about every French viewer.
Comedy and conversation
A style French cinema recognises
Allen’s films are built around conversation, embarrassment and people examining their own behaviour. That approach has an obvious place in a film culture that has long taken talk-heavy comedies seriously. Emmanuel Mouret is regularly called “the French Woody Allen” because his films also follow romantic indecision through long conversations and shifting relationships.
The difference in reception became a joke in Hollywood Ending. The film received mixed reviews in the United States but played at Cannes and was treated more kindly by parts of the French press. Its director character sums up the situation after his career collapses at home: “Here I’m a bum… There, I’m a genius. Thank God the French exist.”
Allen on France
Paris and French cinema
Allen has spoken about France with the same enthusiasm. In a 2005 RTL interview, he called Paris “one of the highest achievements of humanity, comparable to the Greek miracle.” His connection with the city began in the 1960s and later became part of films including Everyone Says I Love You and Midnight in Paris.
While promoting Coup de chance, he told Variety that he felt indifferent about being cancelled. He remained interested in working in Europe, where his films continued to secure distributors and audiences.
2023 · Coup de chance
His first film entirely in French
Released in September 2023, Coup de chance was Allen’s fiftieth feature and his first made entirely in French. Lou de Laâge, Melvil Poupaud, Niels Schneider and Valérie Lemercier lead the cast. The story places an affair and a possible murder inside wealthy Paris.
- The Wall Street Journal praised the film’s disciplined storytelling and cinematography.
- Première highlighted its thriller structure, irony and Paris setting.
Allen described the film as a way of giving something back to the French cinema that had supported his work. The choice of language and cast makes that connection part of the film rather than publicity surrounding it.
The relationship
An audience he could rely on
French distributors, festivals, critics and audiences continued to treat each new Allen film as a current release. They did not agree about every film, but they kept watching them.
Coup de chance brings that history onto the screen. Its actors speak French, its story belongs to Paris and its production depends on the country that continued to release Allen’s work when much of the American film industry had withdrawn.
Originally published by Woody Allen Films on Medium , 14 July 2025.