The humor, oh the humor! It's a breath of fresh air to be laughing with a Woody Allen film and not at it. He is so good at capturing the cheekiness in meet-cutes, secrecies, and lies, all powdered with exaggerated Frenchness. Forgive my surprised tone, but Coup de Chance surpasses all expectations in the way it turns a rather banal plot into an entertaining game of cat and mouse, without overstepping the boundaries of good taste. In developing a story about female infidelity (or all infidelity, for that matter), one can be overly moralistic just to squeeze out laughs and empathy from the viewer, but Allen refrains from all those cheap tricks. His script is tight and at times ridiculously funny. Whether or not you get behind Fanny and her convoluted ways of seeking happiness, Coup de Chance will offer you plenty of instances to better understand the character in a constellation of other people, who are equally affected by her decisions. In a way, the film is a comedy of ethics as well — something the American director hasn't successfully done in a long, long while.

you can link it to Crimes and Misdemeanours or Match Point, aka the good ol' Woody-Allen-does-crime-movies, where lust is the driving force that causes people's downfall. In Coup de Chance, the setting is similar, with the unexpected affair between Fanny (Lou de Laâge) and her old fling Alain (Niels Schneider) blossoming in the shadow of a rather fulfilling marriage between her and her husband Jean (a fantastic Melvil Poupaud). Afraid of getting caught in the crossfires, Fanny sneaks around Parisian neighbourhoods for clandestine lunch break visits to Alain's apartment, but she's somehow convinced this is meant to be. As with many Woody Allen characters, she is a hopeless romantic and far away from the cynicism her beau exhibits; after all it's only natural to have a woman like her fall for a charming, but dorky writer in spite of her perfectly fitting marriage. That's the kind of thing that happens in an Allen film, but in this case, the delight of watching a comedy of errors unfold is way too big to deny that after all those years (and all those scandals and mediocre to badf films), he's still got something to give.