Tag: Woody Allen

Coup de Chance

Posted on by victorfraga

Fanny Fournier, née Moreau (Lou de Lâage) and Alain Aubert (Niels Schneider) meet during a sunny day in Paris along Avenue Montaigne. Neither of the 30-something Lycée Français de New York alumni expected this chance encounter, after many years without hearing from each other.

Alain reveals that he is a professional writer. He travels around the world while writing scripts and publishing his earlier works. He now lives in Paris, in a small attic flat. The beautiful (and still exuding the charms of youth) Fanny is a bidding assistant now married to a rich and enigmatic lawyer, Jean Fournier (Melvil Poupaud). Alain was secretly in love with Fanny during their time in the United States, but he never dared to confess it to her.

Sparks fly at this first meeting. In the days that follow, they rekindle their friendship, strolling together through the gardens and parks of Paris. As the days go by, one thing becomes clear: Fanny’s life with Jean, a Parisian Bobo, is extremely boring. After a first failed marriage with a drug-addicted artist, this second one leads her to spend unbearable weekends in the countryside (where her husband practices deer hunting). Her routine is boring, insipid, except perhaps for the time she spends with her close friends and confidants. Meanwhile, Alain tries to make progress on his new manuscript about a Paris jazz club and an unlikely pair of musicians falling in love. He exposes to Fanny how chance is a factor humans cannot control. The odds of meeting someone and falling in love are too small. Birth too is a miraculous act.

Their mutual exchanges become more sincere. The relationship strengthens. They make love, they fall in love, without measuring any consequences of their actions. Jealous Jean becomes suspicious of his wife. Phone calls go unanswered. There are whispered dialogues in adjoining rooms. He hires a private eye to follow her. Determined to keep his wife, Jean is prepared to take drastic action.

Thematically, Coup de Chance feels like a continuation of London-set Match Point (Allen, 2005), one of the biggest highlights of Allen’s late career. Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography also deserves a mention: it’s delicious to marvel at the steadicam images, the gentle tracking shots indoors, and the medium shots on the Parisian boulevards. The 83-year-old Italian DoP still exudes talent. The portrayal of the gossipy Parisian bourgeoisie feels realistic. The dialogues are fresh. as the director allowed room for the French cast to improvise, in line with the script. The outcome is a jazzy, dry, with a touch of Chabrol, and a very abrupt ending. This might be Mr. Allen’s swan song, which might explain the sour aftertaste.

Woody Allen started making films in 1the 1960s, fully immersed in the zeitgeist of his time. He portrayed New Yorkers with a witty and original worldview. He crafted deeply personal, moving and surprising stories during his prime. Outside of his native city, exiled from the American industry, he now seems a man out of place and out of time. Mr. Allen’s possible swan song is still noteworthy, however, even if the 87-year-old director is not at the top of his game.

Coup de Chance premiered in the 80th Venice Film Festival in September, and it was released in Spanish, French and Italian cinemas later in the same month. It also shows in the Best of Festival section of the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. A UK release date is still to be announced.

This piece is a cross-publication in partnership with Deve.

Rifkin’s Festival

Posted on by victorfraga

We open with the protagonist in therapy. Titular Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shaun) is recounting his recent trip to Donostia-San Sebastián for their world-renowned Film Festival. As it happens, the film is also premiering at said festival, giving with a weirdly self-congratulatory resonance to proceedings. Ouroboros eat your tail out. Thankfully the film is not really about this event and there are no screening or award ceremonies depicted. That is the offscreen world of Mort’s publicist wife Sue (Gina Gershon), whom he accompanies on suspicion of infidelity with her latest charge, intensely forward breakout director Philippe (Louis Garrel).

This is a tale of two intergenerational seductions – thin ice for Allen to skate. Whilst Philippe offers Sue exuberance and smouldering unselfaware pretensions, her passions laying dormant after years of drudgery with snobby Mort. Sensing the dam is near to bursting, Mort becomes infatuated with local doctor Jo Rojas (Elena Anaya). True to form, his attempts at courtship involve conjuring ever-more banal ailments as excuses for further appointments at the clinic to drop some more filmic erudition on her with each instalment. Jo is not immune to these advances, having spent some time in the arthouse cinemas of New York and Paris.

The way Rifkin keeps returning, each time armed with more prior knowledge of her fractious love life and looking for an opportunity to worm into the cracks is off-putting and personally justified by some misplaced White Knight Syndrome. Whilst Sue is portrayed as independent and confident, Jo is competently intelligent but cast in a tragic light due to her bad choices in men and her unfaithful husband. Obviously the 76-year-old former film professor is the one to save her from this troubled life.

Indeed, the film would fail a reverse Bechdel test – rarely do two men speak to each other about anything other than a woman they are lusting after. Throwaway lines are funnier than Allen’s last outing A Rainy Day in New York (2019), with the industry bods and film scenesters providing ample ammunition. Still, some set-ups peter out to nothing and the same is true for the over-frequent black-and-white daydream/nightmare scenes. These are modelled on classic scenes from classic European film directors and isn’t it all just so classic. These moments give colour to the light debate on film artistic snobbery versus sincerity and the pretensions of both that runs through the film.

Wallace Shawn is good value for money as Wallace Shawn – solipsistic voiceovers accompany his aimless wandering through picturesque city streets and parks in scenes reminiscent of the opening to My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981). As a resident of Donostia, it is satisfying to see that the geography of these transitions and other excursions actually makes sense. Also present are the stereotypical Basque summer conditions of grey skies that magically disappear into glorious sunshine whenever characters are inside. This washed-out yellow sunbeam lighting is overly distracting but helps craft the illusion of a ‘magical’ festival in the ‘enchanting’ city. Similarly, auxiliary characters exist seemingly just to repeat how magical and enchanting everything is without that much of the city itself being shown beyond the beach, the 2000-quid-a-week-hotel they are installed in and a brief glimpse from the floor-to-ceiling windows of a Michelin-starred restaurant.

There is almost a white-washing of any Basque culture beyond the city as a Spanish destination resort and this has fomented some unrest among Donosti locals who see the film as nothing more than a tourist brochure. Allen himself practically confirms this in an earlier press conference and again, with the same word-for-word spiel, in a pre-recorded segment shown before the film: the people who were financing my movie wanted me to make a film in Spain and I thought to myself I’ve been to San Sebastián and I worked backwards from there. The onstage quickscrabble of producer Jaume Roures to insist that Woody insisted on San Sebastián from the beginning would be humorous if not for the context of the issue in a long and at times violent history of Basque secession. See also HBO’s recent television adaptation of the book Patria, premiering at this same festival. The terrorist group ETA have disarmed but an upswell of anti-tourist sentiment has taken their place with skyrocketing property prices as a result of the Airbnb effect. On the night of the premiere, groups of young protesters gathered with banners reading “We are not extras in our own city” in Spanish and Basque. Having seen the film, they are not even that.

Rifkin’s Festival has just premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

A Rainy Day in New York

Posted on by victorfraga

Two young adults from wealthy backgrounds are in their formative years at a liberal arts school. Timotee Chalamet’s ‘Gatsby Welles’ is a sensitive, intellectual type; a rudderless chancer, content with a demimonde of high stakes poker games and dive bar pianists. His college paramour Ashley Enreight has adjacent sentiments and harbours journalistic ambitions (Elle Fanning, playing the Arizona country girl). These differences in temperament are smoothed by earnest youth and a mutual love of North American cinema classics – a passion that leads the pair to finally take a much discussed romantic weekend in New York as Ashley is tasked with interviewing Liev Schreiber’s arthouse director for their local newspaper.

This premise sets the scene for odysseys through two distinct NYCs as the characters are soon separated, plans gone awry. Gatsby hails from Old Money circles of New York and is desperate to demonstrate his authentic New Yorker credentials through a tour of hotel piano bars and Central Park brooding spots. All whilst unsuccessfully avoiding his commitment to attend his mother’s ‘autumn ball’ with likewise wealthy friends. This cloistered, chandaliered world is played in stark contrast to the quickly escalating silver screen adventures of Ashley. Screenwriters, film stars and paparazzi move across a different stage of modern split-floor apartments and trendy parties, with the frenetic neuroticism of the newly minted. Together, both settings are distinctly unrelatable to an average viewer and I was left wondering who exactly this film was made for, if not solely Woody Allen. The story of a developing college romance is more relatable but kept at a physical remove by the separation of the principals.

A similarly self-indulgent meta-referential thread runs through the film. Characters discuss New York movie clichés whilst living New York movie clichés. There is a sense that these scenes are played tongue-in-cheek but the distinct lack of irony belies this purpose. Likewise, dialogue is ropy with the vast majority of punchlines falling flat. The filmmaking setting gives room for parody and practically every male figure can be construed as a reflection of Allen and his insecurities.

There is an attempt to deconstruct the idea of the ‘muse’ as the somewhat pathetic older male figures are shown to fawn over the not-so-naïve Ashley, claiming that her voice is the only thing to get through to them whilst pushing for a more physical intimacy. This makes for uncomfortable viewing, considering the acknowledged female inspirations throughout Allen’s ouvre against the backdrop of his own sexual conduct. It feels a defense of sorts – as if by highlighting the absurdity of the lecherous filmmakers he can absolve his own allegations. It is as transparent as the Catcher In the Rye references. Less an homage and more a direct trasnposition, one scene even has Gastby lamenting the ‘phonies’ of his mother’s acquaintance in a bar scene that could have been ripped from the novel.

At least performances are strong, with both Chalamet and Fanning adding youthful charisma to the otherwise tepid script. A turn by Selena Gomez as the younger sister of Gatsby’s high school beau is also integral, though more unconvincing. However, the question remains, are journeyman acting and muddled themes enough to justify this film’s existence? There is a maelstrom of issues surrounding Allen and the release of this film that have been covered elsewhere. Suffice to say, should we be bending ethics backwards to ‘separate art from artist’ when the creative output is this stale or is his time truly up?

Charles Williams is a British-born writer based in San Sebastian, Spain, where A Rainy Day in New York has seen a theatrical release. The movie is out on VoD in the UK on Friday, June 5th (2020)