Coup de Chance (2023)
Film Overview
A chance encounter on a Paris street reconnects a married woman with a former schoolmate and begins an affair that threatens the apparently perfect life she shares with her wealthy husband.
Lou de Laâge plays Fanny, professionally successful and living in an elegant Paris apartment with her husband Jean, played by Melvil Poupaud.
Their marriage appears enviably secure until Fanny unexpectedly encounters Alain, played by Niels Schneider, an old school friend who admits that he had been in love with her years earlier.
The two begin seeing one another, initially through lunches and walks that gradually become a serious affair. Alain’s less materialistic life awakens something in Fanny that has become increasingly absent from her marriage.
Jean begins suspecting that Fanny may be involved with somebody else. His polished charm and confidence slowly reveal a more controlling and dangerous side, particularly once Alain becomes an obstacle to the life Jean intends to preserve.
Valérie Lemercier plays Fanny’s mother Camille, whose curiosity about Jean’s past gradually becomes important. Vittorio Storaro photographs Paris in rich autumnal colour, while a compact jazz soundtrack led by Nat Adderley, Herbie Hancock compositions and the Modern Jazz Quartet gives the thriller a remarkably light and propulsive musical surface.
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My Review
Chance opens the door and then refuses to say what happens next
Coup de Chance announces its subject in the title. Luck, coincidence and accidents shape the entire story, but the film’s sharper point is that people still make terrible choices inside the opportunities chance provides.
Fanny does not go looking for Alain. She simply meets him on Avenue Montaigne.
That single encounter creates an alternative life she did not know was available.
The coincidence matters because the film keeps asking how much of a life is chosen and how much simply arrives.
Fanny does not decide to change her life. She turns a corner in Paris and discovers another version of it walking towards her.
Lou de Laâge makes Fanny’s dissatisfaction subtle. The marriage to Jean is not introduced as visibly miserable.
They have money, a beautiful apartment and the polished ease of a couple other people might envy.
The problem is less what Fanny has than what she has stopped feeling.
Alain reconnects her with spontaneity and with a version of herself that existed before her current life became so organised.
Niels Schneider gives Alain exactly the relaxed quality required. He does not need to compete with Jean’s wealth.
His appeal is partly that he represents a world not organised around status. Lunches, walks and conversation feel different from the social life surrounding Fanny’s marriage.
Their affair develops with an almost romantic-comedy lightness.
That makes the darker direction considerably more effective when it arrives.
For Fanny, Alain feels like freedom. For Jean, he eventually becomes a problem to be solved.
Melvil Poupaud is excellent because Jean initially appears far too controlled to become frightening.
His confidence is part of the threat. He is accustomed to organising the world around him and appears to regard most practical difficulties as things money, connections or determination can resolve.
Suspicion therefore does not send him into emotional chaos.
It sends him towards management.
That makes Coup de Chance an interesting relative of Match Point. Both films concern affluent relationships, infidelity, crime and the role of luck.
But the perspective has changed. Chris Wilton was the outsider trying to preserve the privileged world he had entered. Jean is already established inside such a world and treats its preservation almost as entitlement.
In both cases, murder becomes an attempt to force uncertainty back under control.
Chance, naturally, remains uncooperative.
Jean can arrange people, money and appearances. The one thing he cannot employ is luck.
Valérie Lemercier is a huge pleasure as Camille because she brings curiosity, humour and intelligence into the second half.
Fanny’s mother is initially part of the social background. Gradually, details about Jean stop satisfying her.
Camille begins asking questions, and the film briefly becomes a domestic detective story in which maternal suspicion is considerably more useful than official investigation.
Her interest gives the plot a wonderfully human counterweight to Jean’s calculation.
Paris is photographed beautifully, but this is not the nostalgic Paris of Midnight in Paris.
Storaro gives the city autumn colours: greens, golds, browns and blue-grey streets. The Luxembourg Garden and Montmartre feel lived in rather than fantastical.
Véronique Mélery’s interiors make Fanny and Jean’s apartment an extension of their marriage — expensive, balanced and apparently flawless.
The more dangerous the story becomes, the more useful that visual perfection feels.
Fanny and Jean’s apartment looks perfect because the marriage is supposed to look perfect. The film spends the rest of its time opening drawers.
The jazz soundtrack is one of my favourite elements. Nat Adderley’s recordings give the film a buoyant rhythm that refuses to announce the darkness too early.
Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island, performed by Adderley, becomes the most recognisable recurring piece.
The Modern Jazz Quartet’s Bags’ Groove, Art Farmer and Donald Byrd’s When Your Lover Has Gone, and Hank Jones with Kenny Burrell create a small but exceptionally strong collection.
The music makes crime feel almost casually embedded inside ordinary Paris life.
That casual tone is crucial. Allen does not build the murder material through heavy thriller music or visual darkness.
Jean behaves practically. Paris remains beautiful. Fanny continues living her life.
The horror comes from how easily violence can sit behind a polished social surface.
Again, this brings the film close to the moral universe of Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point.
The film never makes Paris look sinister. It allows something sinister to happen in a city that continues looking beautiful.
Then chance returns in the most literal possible way. Jean has worked hard to eliminate uncertainty, but the final outcome is produced by an event he could never reasonably have planned.
That is more satisfying than conventional justice because it completes the film’s argument.
Luck is neither moral nor immoral. It does not know who deserves what.
It simply happens.
For me, Coup de Chance is a very strong final entry in the filmography as it currently stands. The French-language setting gives the dialogue a fresh rhythm, the cast is excellent and Storaro again finds a completely different visual identity for another European city.
It also returns Allen to one of his most persistent subjects without simply repeating an earlier film.
Human beings plan. They deceive, love, betray, investigate and occasionally kill.
Then a completely unrelated event occurs and rearranges everything.
Everybody in Coup de Chance makes choices. The final decision belongs to chance itself.
Cast and Characters
Lou de Laâge
A successful Parisian woman whose chance reunion with an old school friend begins destabilising her apparently perfect marriage.
Melvil Poupaud
Fanny’s wealthy and controlled husband, whose response to suspected infidelity reveals a far more dangerous side.
Niels Schneider
Fanny’s former schoolmate, now a writer, whose accidental meeting with her develops into an affair.
Valérie Lemercier
Fanny’s mother, whose growing curiosity about Jean’s past gradually turns her into an unexpectedly effective investigator.
Elsa Zylberstein
A member of the couple’s polished Parisian social circle.
William Nadylam
One of the friends populating Jean and Fanny’s outwardly enviable social world.
Sixties jazz gives the thriller an unexpectedly light step
Nat Adderley, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd and Hank Jones create a compact soundtrack whose relaxed confidence works beautifully against the increasingly dangerous plot.
Cantaloupe Island
Herbie Hancock’s composition is heard in Nat Adderley’s 1966 recording. Its cool, rhythmic confidence becomes one of the defining sounds of a film in which dangerous decisions unfold behind an elegant Parisian surface.
A remarkably concentrated soundtrack
The film relies on a small group of carefully chosen jazz performances rather than a large compilation or original dramatic score.
The result gives the entire film a consistent rhythmic identity while avoiding obvious thriller music.
Fortune’s Child
The opening-credits recording announces the film’s obsession with luck before Fanny’s chance encounter has even occurred.
Bags’ Groove
Milt Jackson’s composition brings one of modern jazz’s most elegant ensembles into the soundtrack.
When Your Lover Has Gone
The title gains a particularly dark resonance once Fanny and Alain’s relationship becomes central to Jean’s suspicions.
In the Bag
Adderley returns with another crisp, propulsive recording that keeps the film moving even as the plot becomes more dangerous.
Locations
Paris is photographed as a city of autumn colour, affluent interiors, grand avenues, parks and neighbourhood streets where life can change through one completely ordinary encounter.
Avenue Montaigne
Fanny’s chance encounter with Alain takes place on one of Paris’s most elegant avenues, establishing the event from which the entire story grows.
Jardin du Luxembourg
The Luxembourg Garden provides one of the film’s defining Paris landscapes and reflects Allen’s long affection for the city.
Montmartre
Allen returns to a neighbourhood already central to his vision of Paris in Midnight in Paris.
Champs-Élysées
The grand western avenues contribute to the affluent and carefully maintained social world surrounding Fanny and Jean.
Place Monge
The Latin Quarter location adds a more everyday Paris to the film’s mixture of wealthy interiors and public streets.
Autumn in the City
Storaro and Mélery create an idealised but recognisably contemporary Paris, using colour and architecture to make the city inseparable from the film’s fascination with chance.
Awards and Recognition
Out of Competition
Coup de Chance premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival in September 2023.
Allen’s First French-Language Feature
The film was made entirely in French, giving the performances and dialogue a new rhythm within Allen’s filmography.
Fifth Feature with Vittorio Storaro
After Café Society, Wonder Wheel, A Rainy Day in New York and Rifkin’s Festival, Storaro returned for another visually distinct collaboration.
Véronique Mélery
Mélery collaborated with Allen for the first time, shaping both the affluent interiors and the idealised contemporary Paris surrounding the characters.
Jazz Returns
The compact soundtrack brings Allen back firmly to jazz through Nat Adderley, Herbie Hancock, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Art Farmer.
Chance Comes Full Circle
The film returns to the questions of luck, infidelity and crime explored in earlier dramas while finding a distinctly French and late-career variation on them.