«I have always been very lucky in life. I have had parents who loved me, a wife and children, and at nearly 88, I have never been in the hospital for a day. Even as a director then it went well for me and I hope that this luck continues for me ». As at the Lido Woody Allen, ever smaller and in a light blue shirt, comments on his Coup de Chance, a film out of competition in this edition of the Venice Film Festival and which tells, somewhat as he had already done in Match point, the importance of chance in life. On his fascination with the death he shares with Ingmar Bergman he only says: «There is nothing that can be done against her, it is truly a bad thing that exists. We can just not think about it, distract ourselves.”
In this his fiftieth film, a romantic thriller which was filmed in French and will be distributed by Lucky Red, we find ourselves in Paris where the beautiful Fanny (Lou de Laâge) is happily married to Jean (Melvil Poupaud), a rich entrepreneur with a mysterious job. However, when the woman, who works in an art gallery, “casually” meets an old schoolmate Alain (Niels Schneider) who takes her back to those years when she was more authentic and less bourgeois, she begins a story with him. stormy love and unpredictable developments.
To those who remind the director of Play It Again Sam that murder, adultery and the triumph of chance are also the themes of a classic like Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, Allen replies: «I hadn’t thought about it, but in reality all these themes are part of the classical dramaturgy from the Greeks, my films have often touched on these themes it is inevitable».
When will he return to filming in his New York? «I already have a wonderful idea to shoot in my city. If some madman comes forward and says he wants to finance it, I’m ready.’ Why make a film in French? “We all grew up with European films and always dreamed of making a classic European film. I wanted to feel like a French, German, Italian director, in short, a European director». Is it true that he’s better at writing female roles? “When I was thirty, when I wrote the roles for myself, I was also good at the male roles, but I was always better at the female ones”.
Clamorous protest Flash mob in front of the Coup de Chance redcarpet as Woody Allen passed by with his wife Soon-Yi Previn. “Turn off the spotlight on the rapists” shouted a group of women, but also some men, staging the protest in the area in front between the Palace and the Casino, even going topless, before being dispersed by security.
They distributed a flyer in which it underlines the presence at the festival with as many films by three people who have been involved in criminal proceedings for cases of sexual abuse and violence: Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson.