Woody Allen has described his new film Coup de Chance as a “toxic romantic thriller”. The film made its debut at the Venice International Film Festival on Monday and will be released in theaters on September 27th. But American moviegoers won’t be able to see it in theaters unless they happen to be visiting Paris or Marseilles.
Like his last two films, “Coup de Chance” — a French production in the French language with a French cast — will not be distributed in U.S. theaters. Mr. Allen’s last contract with an American company ended in 2018, when Amazon cut ties with the filmmaker amid renewed focus on allegations that he abused his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.
Mr. Allen has repeatedly denied these allegations and continued his work. He filmed “Coup de Chance” in and around Paris and found a major production company there willing to work with him.
France has long been a refuge for American artists fleeing racism or political persecution, including Josephine Baker, beloved by Parisian audiences in the 1920s, and film director Jules Dassin, who found work in French cinema after losing his career during the 1920s McCarthy era was blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s era.
But recently France has warmly welcomed people who fall into a completely different category: men accused of sexual abuse, sexual misconduct or domestic violence.
Louis CK performed a stand-up gig in Paris in 2018 to loud laughter, months after several women said he masturbated in front of them. (“These stories are true,” he responded to the women’s accusations.) He then appeared in the French television series “La meilleure version de moi-même” (“The best version of me”) directed by Blanche Gardin, a French woman Comedian and filmmaker who became his girlfriend. Louis CK and Ms. Gardin, who are no longer together, also did a podcast about their relationship.
In the United States, Louis CK has not appeared on talk shows or made films or television shows for major entertainment companies since the allegations against him, but continues to receive support from his die-hard fans. In January he gave a sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Johnny Depp has been more or less unemployed at major Hollywood studios since his ex-wife Amber Heard accused him of physical and sexual abuse in a 2018 Washington Post opinion piece. According to his manager, Disney canceled a $22.5 million contract for Mr. Depp to appear in a new installment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, but a French company, Why Not Productions, hired him to star in a costume drama: “ Jeanne du Barry.”
In the film, Mr. Depp played Louis XV, the 18th-century French leader known as Louis the Beloved, his first major role in three years. When the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the actor received a seven-minute standing ovation. “Jeanne du Barry” continued to post strong box office returns in France. Variety noted that the successful theatrical release showed that Mr. Depp was still a bankable star, adding: “At least in France.”
Mr. Allen is the latest male artist to go there for professional recreation — or simply to continue making films. In the United States, several A-list stars, including Greta Gerwig and Timothée Chalamet, have expressed regret about working with him. In France, the 87-year-old director was able to hire a first-class French cast.
How French audiences will react to “Coup de Chance” is an open question. The first reviews for the film range from ambivalent to ecstatic. Le Monde called the direction “laborieuse” (i.e. laborious) on Tuesday.
Graham Robb, a British historian who has written several books about France, said the disparate treatment of these male artists was largely due to cultural differences between France and the United States.
In France, Mr Robb said: “Artists have the right to be criminal and eccentric, to be imaginative and not like other people.”
He cited Arthur Rimbaud, the hedonistic, opium-smoking 19th-century French poet whose writings were part of the secondary school curriculum in France. “Schoolchildren are being forced to read the crazy, drug-fuelled fantasies of Rimbaud,” Mr Robb said. “Breaking rules is considered an indispensable prerequisite for artistic life.”
The scandals surrounding Mr. Allen, Mr. Depp and Louis CK emerged from the #MeToo reckoning. This movement also had some impact on French cultural life. Lawmakers passed a law making street harassment illegal and set the minimum age of sexual consent at 15. Some French entertainers, including actor Gérard Depardieu, have come under fire over allegations of sexual misconduct.
However, Hélène Frappat, a French film critic and novelist, said the movement has not gained as much traction in her home country as it has in the United States. “In France, I don’t think the #MeToo movement has been the revolution I was hoping for so far,” she wrote in an email interview.
She added that while there had been a “revolution” among the younger generation and “many women” in France, the creative community had been largely immune to the change. “The artistic community, like the French elite, is a victim of the moral panic of old white men who are afraid of losing even a little power,” Ms. Frappat wrote.
Mr. Allen and Mr. Depp also have long-standing ties to France. From 1998 to 2012, Mr. Depp was in a relationship with French singer and model Vanessa Paradis; The couple have two children and Mr Depp owns a French village.
Mr. Allen has a specific place in the French public, Ms. Frappat said. Moviegoers in France “remain emotionally connected to the memory of his films, which French audiences looked forward to every year,” she said, adding that she placed herself in that category.
And while Ms. Frappat said she “never questioned” Dylan Farrow’s allegations of sexual abuse against Mr. Allen, she noted: “I continue to love his work, in a kind of conscious and difficult separation.”
That ambivalence was on display in Venice: Mr. Allen received a standing ovation for “Coup de Chance,” while protesters outside the theater held signs calling on festival programmers to “keep rapists out of the spotlight.”
As for Louis CK, Ms. Gardin viewed him as someone who, like Rimbaud, was adept at transforming his baser instincts into art. Ms. Gardin said in his standup, Louis CK “explored his dark side, his perversions and decoded the darkness of the human soul.”
There is perhaps another factor that continues to make these men attractive to French audiences: they come from a country that many come into contact with primarily through pop culture images, and so can seem a little unreal.
“For many Europeans, the United States is a semi-fictional place,” Robb said. “This plays a role in the comparatively kind treatment of people like Johnny Depp. An actor’s actions are, in a sense, things that take place in a semi-fictional world.”