★★★★☆
It’s not often that an audience of hardened media cynics erupt into cheers at the opening rather than the closing credits. But such was the case at today’s screening of Coup de Chance, when the words “écrit et réalisé par Woody Allen” were the cue for almost unanimous uproarious approval. Clearly, for some critics Allen’s status as a master film-maker has been unfairly overshadowed by the wreck of his private life.
The truth, however, is that Allen’s status as a master film-maker has also been overshadowed by almost a decade of incredibly patchy movies, culminating in the recent flop double-whammy of A Rainy Day in New York and Rifkin’s Festival (so poor it skipped a UK release). The pre-screening applause today was thus
