You won’t see Stroke of luckthe 50e feature film by Woody Allen, in a theater near you this weekend. Unless you live in New York or one of the 12 American cities where the film opens on April 5.
The North American distributor of Stroke of luckthe first film in French from the filmmaker Manhattan and of Midnight in Parishas not planned a theatrical release in Quebec of this dramatic comedy notably starring Franco-Québécois Niels Schneider.
The reputation of the 88-year-old filmmaker, who made one film a year for 35 years, has been tarnished to the point where the distribution of his films is now a trickle. In recent years, actresses such as Mira Sorvino (a Harvey Weinstein victim), Kate Winslet and Greta Gerwig have said they regret filming with Allen. Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Hall, stars of A Rainy Day in New York (2019), who did not appear in Quebec, donated their salary.
In 2014, the filmmaker’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, reiterated in a blog from the New York Times having been attacked by Allen. In 1992, at the time of the alleged events, Dylan Farrow was 7 years old and Woody Allen had just left his mother, actress Mia Farrow, for the latter’s 21-year-old daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. The media reported the affair, but it had no immediate consequences on Woody Allen’s career. To this day, the filmmaker pleads parental alienation.
At the time, the filmmaker was not brought to justice after two investigations, including that of Child Protective Services at Yale University Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. But the #metoo movement and a recent documentary produced by HBO, Allen vs. Farrowshed new light on this story: the complacency of investigators towards Allen, the legal and public relations arsenal at his disposal, the prosecutor who believed Dylan Farrow’s version, but chose not to bring charges for protect her, etc.
Woody Allen hasn’t been “canceled” yet. The filmmaker continues, although more difficult, to find financing for his films, especially in Europe. This was already the case before the start of the #metoo movement, in 2017. Thanks to digital platforms, it is possible to see his works, even the most recent. In short, for the culture of cancellation, we will come back.
Also, since Friday, we can see on video on demand Stroke of luck, probably Woody Allen’s best film in a decade. Without being one of his great works, this vaudeville tending towards thriller effectively exploits themes dear to the famous New York filmmaker (the couple, infidelity, chance, death, etc.).
It is the story of a young woman, Fanny (Lou de Laage), cramped in the context of her marriage to a paternalistic Parisian financier (Melvil Poupaud) with a troubled past. Fanny meets in the street a former classmate from the French high school in New York, Alain (Niels Schneider), a bohemian writer who assiduously courts her, after confessing to her that she has been the object of all his desires since ‘adolescence.
The dialogues of this game of love and chance, typical of Woody Allen’s cinema, are more or less credible (they have been translated from English), the game sometimes veers excessively towards boulevard theater , but Stroke of luckpresented at the most recent Venice Film Festival, is cleverly constructed, very amusing, and ends with a delightful final twist.
The question, however, arises: should we refrain from seeing the work of an artist denounced as a pedophile? It is up to each person to choose, in their soul and conscience. Some listen to Michael Jackson, others read André Gide or admire the paintings of Paul Gauguin. I never miss a Woody Allen. It is not always easy to separate the work and the artist. On the other hand, we hastily conclude that an artist is a victim of cancel culture.
This is the thesis defended by Quebec filmmaker Jean-Claude Coulbois in his documentary Eleven days in February, which is still showing. Coulbois attempts to rehabilitate Claude Jutra by forgetting his alleged victims. A biography of Jutra by the late film historian Yves Lever, a specialist in censorship in Quebec cinema, asserted in 2016 that the filmmakerAll things Considered was a pedophile. In the process, an alleged victim of Jutra confided to my colleague Hugo Pilon-Larose that she had been attacked from the age of 6 to 16 by the filmmaker. The screenwriter Bernard Dansereau, Jutra’s godson, also testified to having been attacked by the filmmaker when he was prepubescent.
Jean-Claude Coulbois as well as several speakers in his documentary (including the filmmaker Denys Arcand, the producer Rock Demers and the director of photography Thomas Vamos) nevertheless believe that the name of Jutra was too quickly removed from the gala and from the prizes named in his honor, cinemas and public squares. As if it would have been possible, a few weeks after this scandal, to force a winner to accept on stage a prize bearing the name of an alleged pedophile…
Making Claude Jutra a victim is the incredible diversion of meaning attempted by Coulbois, who would be the first to affirm, with regard to Woody Allen, that he was not convicted by a court of law. Woody Allen, like Claude Jutra, suffered a social sanction, not a legal sanction. We do not respond with legal arguments to a question which goes far beyond the judicial context.
Even if allegations of sexual assault against minors weigh on Claude Jutra, his films have not disappeared. We can see them easily. There are around fifteen of his short and feature films, including his masterpiece My uncle Antoine, offered free of charge on the NFB website. Like Woody Allen, like Roman Polanski and many others, he was certainly not “canceled”.