Impressions of a lucky strike: Woody Allen’s Coup de chance

This is an analysis of the film, not a review, so beware of spoilers — the entire plot will be revealed.

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Coup de chance is Woody Allen‘s 50th film so perhaps it is time to have a look at the cinematic qualities of his work, especially since this is one of his most elegant films, but unobtrusively so, in close co-operation with another veteran, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. 

This piece will concentrate on imagery, visual motifs/echoes and mise-en-scène, but first as a stage-setting some general comments on narrative and characters. The big takeaway as regards performance is Melvil Poupaud as Jean Fournier, a financial advisor doing shady business “making rich people richer”, an extrovert whom we gradually realise is a psychopath, something that becomes even clearer upon revisits.

Underneath the light touch of the film and Jean’s suave exterior lurks a chillingly convincing portrait of a monster: his fawning over his wife Fanny (the elegant, very likeable Lou de Laâge) is deeply manipulative; when he learns she has an affair with the author Alain Aubert (Niels Schneider) without hesitation he decides to have him killed; and while planning this and after the execution, the audience, who is let in on this plot, see that he is toying with her, mocking her without her realising it, and with silent glee observing her distraught state when the lover seems to have suddenly abandoned her.

Another gradual discovery is how he is looking at and talking to Fanny as if she was a child, revealed in earnest in a scene where he chides her for having bought a lottery ticket – a fitting occasion since the film is about coincidence and luck, in a work starting and ending with the story’s biggest  twists of fate. Jean does not believe in chance but in making his own luck by manipulating the world to his advantage, but Alain is his total opposite: child-like, innocent, romantic and old-fashioned, even something as deeply unfashionable as a smoker. As a novelist, he hates re-reading and seems to entirely trust his choices during a linear process of writing the book. He is not possessive like Jean but his almost canine, needy devotion to Fanny comes across as immature, even slightly creepy.

Between the males we have Fanny, who, as she points out herself, is a sort-of split character: Fanny Moreau whom Alain was in love with from a distance back in their student days, and Fanny Fournier, the current trophy wife. Her ambition in the arts has now turned into working for an auctioneering company trading art as objects to the rich.

The narrative of Coup de chance is chameleonic, twisting and turning. Alain is right out of the gate a disrupting character, but after he has gone, Fanny’s mother Camille (Valérie Lemercier) takes over that function as well as the status of a third protagonist – she too old-fashioned and with an even more tenuous grip on reality than Alain. (After all, she blithely agrees to the hair-rising idea of going alone hunting with someone she is dead certain is a ruthless murderer!)

Jean is very enthusiastic about her, since she adores him (his wealth a big plus) and loves her visits, but towards the end, after he realises she is on to something, he cannot wait to get rid of her. Fanny is at first deeply upset about Alain’s disappearance but soon goes into full denial, doing her utmost to get back in the good graces with Jean, and Camille takes over Fanny’s brief stint investigating the mystery. Typically for the film’s shifting narrative, Camille was instrumental in convincing Fanny that Alain had just got cold feet and left her, but she will soon drastically change her opinion.

As a character, Camille is far from the film’s strongest card, but the one-take scene where she pays a visit to a private detective to pry information from him about an assignment he once did for Jean is a humorous masterpiece, where she radiates phoniness and awkwardness, coming across as incredibly suspect. Her tone of voice and body language is brilliant, especially the small step she takes just before leaving, as if she is about to break into a panicky wild run to get out.

Another aspect of this trajectory business is the humour. Coup de chance is often reviewed and talked about as a comedy, but the first half does not seem to be intended as particularly funny. From a certain point, however, a playfully absurd layer starts creeping into the film – paradoxically at the very point the plot takes an utterly grave turn with the murder of Alain, where a lively, light jazz tune on the soundtrack amusingly undermines the sequence of the disposal of Alain’s body (the titles music, which continues playing discreetly during the opening scene, thus accompanying both his introduction and farewell, ironically called “Fortune’s Child“). The score consists of five recurring jazz pieces – plus a sixth as background during Jean’s birthday party – and the most memorable is “Cantaloupe Island“, whose unperturbed cool seems like a laconic counterpoint to the otherwise somber, philosophical last scene, continuing over the end titles.

Contrasts: Jean getting lost in revenge fantasies during his birthday party; Fanny having fun walking in the park with Alain.

The first small sign of absurdity comes a bit earlier when Jean’s mind careens off into a violent revenge fantasy in the middle of a conversation with an acquaintance – he does not seem to have any real friends – and his hateful expression suddenly looks cartoonishly exaggerated. Towards the end, Jean’s plan to kill off Camille comes across as farcical, laughably far-fetched and unrealistic to get away with, plus the added sweet touch that his murderer henchman rather sheepishly must admit he has never fired a gun.

Coup de chance is in many ways a film about (the difficulty of) keeping a secret. As soon as the affair with Alain starts, it acutely conveys how everyday life with Jean becomes a minefield, and it is hard to keep up a natural appearance when you constantly have to be careful about how your behaviour may look to the spouse. Jean has no problem keeping his suspicions of infidelity and the murder plan to himself, but later in this twisty story, roles have changed again, when after the fraught lunch with her mother, Fanny sits on a bench with Jean after they have been jogging but cannot let on that she knows that Camille has a crazy idea that Jean is a murderer.

The relationship between past and present is important to the film: during their chance encounter in the opening scene, Fanny and Alain’s conversation constantly flits back and forth between student life memories and the current situation. Jean is obsessively enthusiastic about a model railway he has installed at home, but it is very important to him that it is antique, a 1950s Märklin set, and the paintings and objects that Fanny help selling are products of the past.

The determined old-fashionedness of a pair of characters is important too: Joe McElhaney, a US film professor with an interest in Allen’s work, has pointed out on his Facebook page that resistance towards digital technology becomes a central plot element. (As far as I know, Allen himself is still writing his scripts on a typewriter.) Fanny’s mother – Alain’s substitute character – is hauling books around because she prefers “paper in my hands” when reading, but much more important is the fact that Alain writes his novel by hand, and Fanny’s decisive discovery very late in the film will hinge on that fact.

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The film is subtly adept at demonstrating how Jean’s trophy wife is merely a possession among his many other fine objects. When he makes love to Fanny, he insists on having the light on – he wants to see the trophy. He is constantly emphasising how she looks to others: he talks to the detective he is hiring about how desirable she is to others, and when he takes her to parties and social gatherings he points out how her appearance will be stunning and make people admire her and, of course, indirectly him for owning her. He buys her expensive dresses and rings, like other objects he acquire; the only difference is that she has to be persuaded a bit – she claims the ring is too expensive, which is not her style – but the film very believably demonstrates how he is wearing her down, always getting his will.

In this early scene, the mise-en-scène places them before a painting, another possession like the expensive ring he has bought for Fanny. First he holds the case of the ring and then he holds her, an entirely natural thing between loved ones, but it also connects the ring and her as objects.

She resists wearing the ring, however, and the battle of wills continues in front of his railway model set, an object signifying his need of absolute control. (But his attachment to the set throughout the film is an entirely sterile endeavour, a closed circuit that does not lead him anywhere.)

Soon afterwards, they have arrived at their country house, and like the car she is an object that is owned, the film lingering on how he is leading her away, his arm possessively around her.

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With this, we have already started to examine visual properties of Coup de chance. Its elegance is so inobtrusive and apparently effortless that its extent is easy to overlook. Many scenes are staged in a single long take and the average shot length is 16.1 seconds, a very high number. There are as many as 50 shots longer than 30 seconds (here is a list of the longest ones) and 41 percent of the shots are longer than 10 seconds.

As a general rule, Allen is carefully providing establishing shots and transport between locations, with very little abrupt cutting from scene to scene. On the whole, his visual storytelling style is very clean and transparent. The following analysis is heavily illustrated with screenshots, taken from the French Blu-ray (some have been artificially brightened to enhance explanatory value). Some non-visual items of interest will also be pointed out as we go along.

Backgrounds

Like the painting and railway set above, backgrounds are important to the film. In the early cocktail party scene, the trophy wife is shown as purely decorative and an adornment, carefully placed in conjunction to the painting.

Jean and his acquaintance admire, compare and discuss their respective trophy wives, themselves strategically placed between them.

Sometimes the background is for pure aesthetical pleasure.

The lamp seems to help seal the new pact between Fanny and Jean after she is enthusiastically embracing the marriage again after Alain is out of the picture (although the yellow object, a colour connected to Alain, can also be regarded as an ironic reminder).

Backgrounds are especially significant in Fanny and Jean’s apartment. This grotesque portrait of Jean is hilarious – and in blue, which we shall see is his dominant colour.

This is the morning after Alain’s murder, and even though we are more than halfway into the film, it is the first time we see this important room, probably to give the painting a greater (but still discreet) effect. The tiny figure on the hill seems out of time, frozen in time, out of reach, out of human contact – like the now dead Alain, and the figure is carefully kept in view while Fanny tries to call him.

The late scene where Camille is questioning Jean about the death of his former partner ends up with him, as if an indictment, before the same painting.

Mirroring shots: (top) Jean is starting to suspect that Fanny is unfaithful, and (bottom) the last shot of the telephone conversation with the detective, who has warned Jean that Camille is investigating him. Both processes will lead to plans of murder.

Ingeniously, as the climax is balancing on a knife’s edge with Camille in acute danger of being murdered in a forest, at the very moment Fanny is getting the all-important idea to look for Alain’s manuscript, she is standing in front of a tree.

The hunting motif

The above brings us to the central motif of hunting. As Jean picks up Fanny’s phone and the caller (Alain) remains silent – making Jean even more certain she is having an affair – the composition is rather odd, dominated by the bed. This seems to be preparation for a visual rhyme with the next scene, where after a direct cut the emptiness of that bed is substituted with Fanny, meeting Alain in his apartment.

Later, after Alain has been murdered, the type of composition is repeated, but this time Jean has “reclaimed” her, putting her back on the formerly empty bed. She is drunk and totally out of it, as if a cadaver of a felled animal…

…and this points forward to Jean in a similarly prone position, dead after having been shot by actual hunters. (His eyes are open even in death, as if still fixating on his target.)

There is a lot of walking in the film, here in an exaggerated manifestation with Fanny running on a treadmill. This is the next scene after Fanny and Alain have started their affair, and as if Jean has a sixth sense against threats of losing his trophy wife, his behaviour has suddenly changed, now impatient and irritated with her. Life is turning into a nightmare for Fanny and the treadmill into metaphor: like in many nightmares, she is running and running but not making progress escaping the pursuer.

Like in the exercise room, she is also cornered as if a hunted animal in this scene, in the bathroom when he is demanding to see Alain’s lottery ticket, which she is hiding. (The way he is suddenly pouncing on her, almost hurtling himself through the door, never fails to amuse.)

Let us have another look at the situations of Jean being pensive in his office: here he is starting to suspect that Fanny is unfaithful, and the background is hinting at a wilderness, an arena for hunting.

When Camille is getting suspicious about Jean, he is moving around the apartment with her in pursuit asking questions about his former partner. Later, she is hunting for evidence and here too she is shown moving around the premises. During the climax, Fanny is hunting for some clue to Alain’s disappearance in his flat, while Jean is arranging a hunting accident for Camille in the forest, crosscut with their friends hunting (their exact word) for antiques in a nearby village.

On his part Alain is chasing Fanny, although his persistence comes across as friendly and harmless. (It is curious, however, that he would say he had always imagined her living with an artist in an attic, since he himself now has precisely such a flat. Could it be that his bumping into Fanny in the opening scene is in fact a calculation? But that would seriously undermine the film’s all-important theme of coincidence.)

We also have the female detective that is hunting for proof of their affair. Some of the most chilling moments of Coup de chance are the scenes where Jean, with psychopathic glee, is cat-and-mouse toying with his victim Fanny, for example when he wants to speak about their relationship – pointedly asking his absent-minded wife, who is preoccupied with her affair, if something is wrong – after he has just called the hired killers to arrange for the disposal of her lover.

Echoes

Two telephone conversations form a pairing with a stark contrast: Fanny talks to Alain when she is nervous about Jean suspecting the affair – note the carefully visible marriage ring and the doorway behind her, as if Jean at any time could pounce on her, as is his habit – and the darkness as Jean sets his murderous scheme in motion.

Fanny and Alain’s first and last scene form a discreet echo and closure. Both situations are shot in a single, extended take, and both depict a meeting, since the latter initially shows them in separate rooms in his flat, before she walks up to him (clothes nicely matching their respective surroundings)…

…but while in their first scene they definitely co-habit the same world, in the latter they remain apart visually, since the framing keeps dwelling on their differing backgrounds, as if foreshadowing their imminent separation. (Also, showing Alain against his wardrobe is useful here, since when Fanny later comes looking for him, one important clue of his disappearance is that it is empty.)

It so happens that in the first scene with Jean and Fanny, they too are shown in separate spaces, an immediate indicator of the emotional gulf between them.

Water and wanderings

Perhaps the film’s most cunning moment: As Fanny and Camille discuss Alain’s mysterious disappearance, the camera is closing in, making the background pond increasingly prominent, since Alain’s body is on the bottom of the ocean. As Joe McElhaney pointed out to me, the bench itself calls back to the many moments on benches between the lovers. But we have never seen a bench from behind like this, an indicator how things are changed. (Later, when out exercising, Jean too will end up on a bench with Fanny.)

The fact that water tries to massage our subconscious like this may shed light on an earlier, rather mysterious composition when Fanny and Alain are out shopping for food: the camera comes to rest here before the fountain, while they are simply let go, receding into the far background while the scene keeps running. A foreshadowing of Alain’s murder? (As regards the hunting and water motifs: the film emphasises that Fanny is totally uninterested in hunting but enjoys swimming.)

There are also some fainter echoes: As the film is crosscutting between Fanny in a bar and the murderers airlifting the body of Alain to dump it into the ocean, it is emphasising Fanny drinking, as if she is drowning herself in the glass, while Dragos, the chief murderer, produces a flask to take a drink himself. (Earlier, the club of an auctioneer where Fanny is working has mimicked the knocking on Alain’s door before the murder.)

After the detective has offered Jean a cognac to fortify him after the bad news of his wife’s affair, the next scene immediately starts with the maid bringing Fanny a drink. And when Jean soon comes home, he wants another cognac. Again, on closer inspection, one has the feeling that these micro-events form a chain subtly linking scenes, especially since the latter sequence ends with Jean brutally slurping down his cognac, as if a predating wolf, celebrating the murder he has now ordered.

The film feature a lot of wanderings: it is not only Fanny who has clandestine meetings and secret relationships, and it is notable that both of Alain’s murder planning sessions are taking place along the river, killings connected to water, including Jean’s former partner who was dumped in a lake. While Jean’s surroundings here are barren and stony – mirroring his psychopathy – Fanny’s are fertile and green. By the way, the fake hunt of the climax takes place in a forest, a continuation of sorts of the many parks around the lovers.

The barrenness of the murderers is at the most striking in this establishing shot.

Beauty

From everyday drabness to mystery: due to the lens change in the bottom shot, the gate is now distorted and the bent walls are reminiscent of the stony environment of the killers by the river, as if they have encroached – this is after the killing. (Just a lucky coincidence, perhaps, but it is also nice that the “jour et nuit” signs match Fanny’s clothes.)

Fanny is on her way to Alain’s apartment at the end – here everything is bent out of shape, even her body is distorted.

Just before: perhaps the film’s most aesthetically pleasing shot. Notice the light falling on the jacket, faintly reminiscent of her scenes in Alain’s flat, which were marked by a golden light flowing from the windows. The lighting could be an extra nudge making Fanny go to check on his flat one last time. (During the car ride from the country house we have already seen she is in a pensive mood.) The composition with a foregrounded empty bed recalls the hunting motif – and Fanny’s mother is at this very moment the object of a hunt in the forest.

A moment of serene beauty: a delicate dissolve followed by a sensitive track-in – further elevated by the intimate jazz piece “When Your Lover Has Gone” – at a point where Alain is still merely wooing Fanny. She cannot stop thinking about him, however, as she sits in one of the turtlenecks he is fetishising.

Colours

Jean hires a private detective and the latter projects an air of (probably mere professional) sympathy for his client. The sociopathic Jean is somewhat humanised here: we see him at his lowest psychologically, looking unusually fragile, and the handle of the umbrella looks like a cane, making him look almost frail. These two males in cahoots are wearing clothes whose colour closely mirrors each other.

The first meeting when the assignment is given…

…and the next, when Fanny’s affair is rolled out in its devastating scope (this is one of the few times Jean is not in blue, making the mirroring even more significant)…

…and again, as Jean is informed about Camille’s ultra-suspicious visit at the detective agency.

The bag with Alain’s body and the murderers’ clothes are blue(ish), matching Jean’s main colour, as well as the important mark on the tree where Dragos is to wait for the murder of Camille…

…and during this sequence their clothes are matching again.

There is often a blueish shade to Fanny and Jean’s apartment – Jean’s colour, indicating how he is totally dominating her – and in the later stages Allen and Storaro go to rather extreme lengths to drench it even more. In several scenes a filter seems to have been applied to make the rooms look sinister, almost ghostly – here Camille is confronting Jean about the unsavoury rumours about the death of his former partner.

Even more radical: Fanny confronts Camille about her seemingly paranoid suspicions that Jean might have had Alain murdered. Just compare with an earlier scene when everything was fine: the golden hue of the bathroom adjacent to the guest room has been totally replaced with blue. This is also logical since Alain is dead, the light he shone into Fanny’s life having disappeared and Jean having reclaimed her.

This is Camille searching for evidence of Jean’s crimes – compared to earlier, the surroundings of the same room are now much more blue, even violet.

The bookcase contains a large amount of blue items, which becomes very striking compared to the books at the country house.

This is fun: the fence outside Fanny’s workplace combines Jean and Alain’s colours. (The company where Fanny works, Artcurial Bidding House, is real and this is their building.)

Alain’s “golden” apartment is contrasted with the barren and unappealing look of the corridor outside, which recalls the surroundings by the river as the murderers are now closing in for the kill. (Earlier, Alain explained that reality had knocked on the door when his marriage became untenable, and now an even grimmer reality has knocked, literally.)

As Fanny tells her friend at the cocktail party about the chance encounter with Alain, it is wonderful to see the camera doing a quiet, slow dance alongside the characters, and at the conclusion it is choreographed with the character movement to ensure Fanny being suffused by golden light.

Whenever Fanny is sharply lit from the side, it is always in the yellow light connected with Alain: reading the book of poetry selected by him; having lunch in his flat; in bed with him; having returned to his place at the end.

When Fanny enters Alain’s flat at the end, the long-take, sweeping Steadicam movement closely mirrors the scene where Fanny went looking for him earlier – but when it then was drained of colour, now it is back again. (In the earlier scene she was further away from the camera, making her smaller, more forlorn and vulnerable.) We have already seen how she got the idea of looking for Alain’s manuscript standing before a decoration in his yellow colour…

… and after she has found it, look how harmoniously her clothes match Alain’s bedroom, and as she has entered the other room, the motif of being illuminated by the yellow has returned…

… and she is also matching the manuscript, fusing with it and him, the deceased Alain now having the possibility of being immortalised via the book. In the film’s last moments, the camera is closing in on her in mild intensification, while Alain’s voice-over, reading his own text, is speaking to her and us, philosophising about the random nature of life. It is also revealed here that the protagonist is female, and might well be inspired by Fanny.

In fact she sits reading at the very table where the affair started in earnest, in perhaps the most beautiful scene in the film, the composition very harmonious, centered on the window and through it new possibilities…

…and during the first kiss, the lens seems to bend the room and its attic beams in transcendent fashion…

…and the scene ends when they are perfectly centered, cutting away just as a tiny beam from the sun becomes visible.

This analysis has tried to illuminate aspects of Woody Allen’s work as regards imagery, visual motifs and mise-en-scène that are generally getting little attention. Coup de chance comes across as very elegant, thoroughly cinematic and is carefully worked through as a piece of art.

Enclosure – long takes

Longest takes in descending order: (*single-shot scene, **nearly single-shot scene)

• 171 seconds opening scene, Fanny meets Alain on the street*
• 143 Fanny having lunch with Camille, ending in acrimony*
• 118 last shot of cocktail party, Fanny with Jean talking to others, then Fanny talking about meeting Alain with a female friend
• 116 Jean and Dragos planning the murder of Camille*
• 100 discussion about the forgotten medication the morning before Jean and Camille go hunting*
• 93 Fanny and Jean walking in the park at the end of their first lunch meeting*
• 90 Camille paying the detective a visit*
• 87 Fanny and Jean in high spirits, at home after the renewal of their wows*
• 84 Fanny and Camille on a bench discussing Alain’s disappearance
• 83 Camille arrives at Fanny and Jean’s apartment, before they go to dinner*
• 82 discussion among the guests at the renewal of wows about the rumours about Jean’s former partner
• 79 Fanny tries to hide the lottery ticket from Jean*
• 73 Fanny and Camille discussing the former’s marital situation after the restaurant visit*
• 71 the first shot in the scene at Alain’s flat where the affair with Fanny starts
• 71 the last shot of that scene, ending in their first kiss
• 71 Fanny confesses to being unfaithful to her friend, at the swimming pool**
• 69 Jean arrives after the discussion on the bench between Fanny and Camille; he suggest renewing the wows
• 68 the last scene between Fanny and Alain*
• 67 Camille and Jean discuss the rumours about his former partner*
• 64 Fanny and Jean jogging, then sit on a bench talking about Camille*
• 63 the first shot of Camille looking for evidence in Fanny and Jean’s apartment
• 61 the first shot of Fanny and Alain’s first meeting in the park