Woody Allen’s new film, The Great Irony, is coming out. Review

A new, already 50th film by Woody Allen, “The Great Irony” (Coup de chance), is being released, which premiered less than a month ago at the Venice Film Festival. This is a trinket in the spirit of the late period of his work, which will delight fans and will not shake skeptics – however, the almost 88-year-old, but not losing his vigor director, the opinion of both of them, it seems, no longer cares. Tells Julia Shagelman.

“The Great Irony” (in the original “A Happy Chance” or simply “Luck”) continues Woody Allen’s European voyage, which began in 2005 with “Match Point”. These films (and indeed almost all of his films) have a lot in common – the themes of adultery and its consequences, crime and punishment, love in and outside of marriage, life as a chain of accidents, which, no matter how hard you try, cannot be kept under control. The new picture was shot in French with French actors and at first pretends to be the lightest marivodage, then everything suddenly becomes very serious, and is resolved in a truly ironic way – but in order to appreciate this irony, your sense of humor, like the author’s, must be quite black.

Allen’s French capital this time does not look as postcard-tourist as in “Midnight in Paris” (2011), because we are talking about people who live and work here, and do not come to see the Eiffel Tower. But the city, of course, is still marvelously beautiful, and besides, despite the passing of several months in the plot, for the entire hour and a half of its running time it freezes somewhere in the wonderful beginning of September, when it is still warm outside, but the falling leaves are already rustling romantically under feet – and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who has been working with Allen since 2017, also adds his signature golden light.

On such a golden autumn day on Avenue Montaigne, the young writer Alain (Niels Schneider) accidentally meets his old friend Fanny (Lou de Laage). They once studied together at the French Lyceum in New York, where their parents worked, but then their paths diverged. Alain chose creativity (and the relative poverty that came with it), and Fanny, who managed to be a rebel in her youth and was pushed around in an unsuccessful marriage with a drug-addicted musician, divorced and married again – to Jean (Melville Poupaud), about whom no one really knows, what he does, but it brings in a lot of money (he himself says that he “makes rich people even richer”). Now she works at an auction house, just so she doesn’t have to sit around all day, and worries that everyone considers her a “trophy wife.”

Almost in the first minutes of their renewed acquaintance, Alain admits that he was in love with Fanny, but did not dare to tell her about it. Now he acts more boldly: he calls, invites him to lunch, and now they are walking together in the park with sandwiches, remembering their wonderful school days. In this environment, Fanny – still in Chanel shoes and with a Birkin bag – feels more at ease than at boring receptions, dinners and country hunting trips with her husband’s friends, who only gossip and discuss where and what they ate (but Alain quotes Mallarmé!). His bohemian attic and nameless wine, bought “on sale,” complete the matter: a passionate romance breaks out between former classmates.

The audience may have foreseen such a turn, but Fanny herself, who in general still loves her husband, is incredibly surprised by it. Analyzing her own emotions preoccupies her so much that she forgets (or does not want) to really keep a secret – she disappears during long lunch breaks, does not answer calls, and has her head in the clouds. Jean begins to suspect something, and he is a persistent person and, it seems, a little dangerous: for example, there are rumors that his former business partner disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

In the film, two approaches to life collide – or, given its calm, slightly mocking intonation, no matter what happens, they simply meet. Fatalist Alain believes in fate and that everything in the world is decided by chance – for example, the very fact of birth for every person has already become a huge success, because the chances of this are minimal; Self-made Jean believes that relying on the game of fortune is stupid and wrong – a person makes his own way, and luck has nothing to do with it. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle, and who knows about this if not Woody Allen, who was “canceled” in his homeland due to unconfirmed charges of molesting his adopted daughter, and who said at a press conference in Venice, that nothing terrible had ever happened to him and he was always lucky.