Woody Allen
Un colpo di fortuna

Contains spoilers

I am always fascinated by the dramatic thriller/noir of Allen's brand.

Match Point, especially for those belonging to the millennial generation, was a pathway, a cornerstone work for discovering one of the greatest authors in the history of cinema.

Match Point staged a story of passions, betrayals, and crimes in full noir style, but at the heart of its philosophical discourse was the fundamental theme of chance, luck, injustice, or, if you will, the democracy of chaos. The moral reflections, which cyclically call Dostoevsky into question, however, stopped short before the primacy of randomness, its cynical and cruel neutrality.

A ball in or out, beyond or this side in a tennis serve, a ring beyond or this side of the Thames makes all the difference in the world.

Allen, who is especially known for the caustic, sometimes cynical but always brilliant humor of his comedies, has however, tackled the dramatic or noir genre several times.

Match Point was not, in fact, his first film to explore the darker side of man, his evil dictated by impulses, greed, and social status. Nor the best. If the film with Scarlett Johansson was important to introduce Allen to many of a generation, the undisputed and unattainable masterpiece within the dramatic branch of his filmography is certainly Crimes and Misdemeanors, a film that took to the extreme consequences the dark and disenchanted view of life and humanity of the New York author. With an unmatched underlying bitterness before injustice and pettiness, in a world where the law of the strongest has always prevailed, and History is written by the victor. And a happy ending is not possible, as if one were in a Hollywood movie.

Now, with Coup de chance, his fiftieth film (no less), it is as if a circle closes. And it closes precisely in Europe, where Allen has found artistic refuge especially in recent years, following the exile from American cinema. The European air, at any rate, has (almost) always been good for Woody.

Coup de Chance, however, ends with a very different finale compared to the bleak and hopeless ones of the aforementioned two films, because chance, this time, takes the reverse path and, precisely by virtue of its aforementioned, absolute neutrality, leads now to a conclusion of justice. Ruthless and unorthodox perhaps, utterly mocking, but justice nonetheless. With that irony so despised and rejected by him - Jean - who ultimately endures it.

Of course, we all know how watching an Allen film expecting new reflections makes no sense. Rather, it is always lovely to discover the variation on the theme, and it is an eternal pleasure for the eyes and mind to watch a film by Allen and filmed by Vittorio Storaro. In which violence remains, as almost always (think of what remains the masterpiece of the latest Allen, Wonder Wheel), off-screen, suggested and veiled, and for this reason possibly even more painful because it is deprived of that sense of liberation that explicit representation offers. There is no catharsis when Evil is distant from the eyes and, thus, from the heart.

What is shown, instead, is the beauty of the parks and the autumn of the French capital; Storaro's light dazzles once again, enveloping the viewer in wonder and warmth. As if from the effect of a strong embrace.

The beginning of the film reminds of the first meeting between the protagonists of Fassbinder's Martha, with the famous circular tracking shot that enveloped the two in a common spiral, with outcomes obviously very different from those of the two Allenian characters. But the suggestion is strong and does not leave one indifferent.

It remains, finally, how the luck of one is also the misfortune of another, and vice versa. And it is frightening to think how great the sovereignty of chance is, which always and in any case determines the fate of each of us right from conception. The universe itself was likely generated by chance. But, as we are emblematically and wisely told right at the end, better not delve deeper.

Even without the tragic sense of Match Point and the immense depth, given also by religious, historical, and cultural reflections, of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Coup de Chance is a great film and if it were to be Woody Allen's last, as he himself has suggested, it will certainly be a worthy and impeccable conclusion. But we’ll see. The last word, after all, belongs only to the reaper and his macabre dance.