Taha Duri

While I enjoy introspective film about people and relationships, versus action-oriented tales, this film is problematic even within the considerations of its kind. If I must summarize my thoughts to keep the review helpfully brief, the film is patronizing at best. It not only makes no effort at filling gaps, it actually creates gaps at its most mundane parts. At the same time, it misses several opportunities at bridging details by, instead, repeating scenes to the letter with virtually no significance. Too many scenes take too long without building or implying emotion. I am tempted to think that the critics at reputable sites gave this film many stars for the sake of seeming to “get it,” when the film in fact is quite thin on substance to get at all.

Tragic, sincere, outdated, but excellently photographed. It is a document of Margaux Hemingway’s beauty and misfortune. I doubt she was acting, which is why she gives us a reading of a past reality that lives on for us to reconsider, think about and analyze. One thing this film is not is an exploitation piece. That is an unfair characterization that calls for revision.

There is plenty to commend about Coup de Chance, not the least of which is Woody Allen’s venturing to write and make a film in French. A language is far beyond the syntax and composition. It is the culture and mentality that holds social norms and values in place. In this regard Coup de Chance proves, yet again, that adventure and wonder are not age-bound but life-long practices of curiosity and expression. The film is a moment of pondering people, relationships, fate, and our role in the authorship of life. The tale gives way, by its relative simplicity, to resenting and examining the characters involved. These questions recur along the work of Woody Allen, as would a number of areas of inquiry inhabiting the work of any creative mind be it in writing, part bring, music, or sculpture. Here it is in cinema. It he cinematography of this film is stunning. The recurrence of cool shades of blue and violet touched by licks of shimmering grades of glowing orange is breathtaking every time. There is plenty to please the eye as there is to carmine the mind and the meaning of life. Lou de Laage reminds of a young Jeanne Moreau and the other members of the cast are terrifically suited for their parts. This is Woody Allen in top form making a film that stands on its own merit far from the noise and the maddening crowds. I recommend watching it on a quiet ponderous fall afternoon with an intention to question, reflect, and venture out where there may or may not be answers but the journey is enjoyable all the same.

The word regarding this “international” production is that it is “feminist”. I thought feminism took interest in problematizing structural discrimination with an aim of exposing weaknesses and prejudices ultimately proposing more equitable perspectives that serve social justice, no? Even if my understanding is inaccurate, reductive, short-sighted, or any other negative description that floats your boat, I missed the purpose of presenting Empress Elizabeth, a cult sweetheart of German-speaking Europe and beyond as a gross, vomiting, self-serving, ignoble, ingrate who professes disloyalty and hedonism down to the most intimate circles of her existence, denouncing all semblance of family values, friendship, marital fidelity, down to any mores to be found in her lesbian tendencies. What is most bewildering is that such a questionable script found support across three countries to invest in producing it, directing it, and pushing it forward to festivals where it rotated sweeping award after award bestowed by our discerning critics and their admirers. I even hear it won for costume design…. Were those ill-fitted blazers (not even ironed for filming) what royalty sported at the end of the nineteenth century? Maybe. It must have been. Otherwise, those sophisticated committees at film festival would not have showered the film with awards that at least justified the millions of Euros poured into re-writing tales of monarchy a European establishment that’s already hobbling on its last leg. Romy Schneider must be rolling in her grave, bless her soul. Please have mercy on her, on Empress Sisi, or on us, whichever comes more naturally to the film makers of today. No wonder cinema is where it is, as an art as well as an industry. All makes sense.