In a few weeks, Woody Allen’s “Coup de Chance” will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. It’s a film that fall fest programmers, from Venice to San Sebastien, have been raving about.
The film is said to be a return to form for Allen. It privately screened this past Spring in New York City. Obviously, given that only a select number of press were invited, all vehement defenders of Allen’s, most of the reactions were very positive.
With that being said, Allen’s 50th film, shot with French actors, does sound enticing enough. It’s a dark drama that keeps being compared to his 2005 “Match Point.”
Sadly, American audiences will likely not be able to see “Coup de Chance,” as it’s struggling to find American distribution. Nobody wants to touch it.
Although a source close to the film tells me they remain “cautiously hopeful” that one day American audiences will get to watch “Coup de Chance,” they also tell me that the process of trying to find a U.S. distributor has been “incredibly frustrating.”
A source close to the film had this to say:
We hope that the great reviews we expect to come from Venice will have a positive effect but there’s so much more at play here than just the quality of this movie (and it is great!) It’s been a pleasure working with Italian, French, Spanish, Russian distributors, they’re ecstatic about the film’s prospects, and more territories will be announced soon, but it’s been impossible to get any of the American players to even meet with us. The difference has been night and day.
I’m even skeptical when it comes to the reviews the film might get at Venice. There is already an inherent bias in the way critics approach films from “problematic” auteurs.
In 2019, Roman Polanski’s masterful “An Officer And A Spy” was praised by a wide range of European critics, won the Grand Jury and the FIPRESCI Prizes at Venice and nabbed three César awards, but one look at the U.S. reviews of the film and you’d think the film was mediocre.
A similar fate happened to Allen’s “Wonder Wheel.” Although that film was not of the same high quality as “An Officer and A Spy,” it was still one of Allen’s better latter-day efforts. The New York Film Festival announced it as part of its prestigious Main State of films in August of 2017.
In October of 2017, just a few weeks before it was supposed to screen at NYFF, the #MeToo hashtag went viral which led to old allegations against Allen coming back into the spotlight. By the time “Wonder Wheel” premiered, the reviews turned out to be, no coincidence, the worst of Allen’s career (31% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Ever since then, Allen has had great difficulty finding U.S. distribution for his films (“Rainy Day in New York” and “Rifkin’s Festival”) and it seems as though that will likely continue with “Coup de Chance,” which is destined to be panned by U.S. critics.