Woody Allen’s ‘Coup De Chance’ Gets 5-Minute Ovation At Venice Film Festival, Protestors March Past Red Carpet

Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Monday. The film, which was directed and written by Allen himself, received a five-minute ovation from the audience.

Coup de Chance centers around Fanny and Jean who look like the ideal married couple—they’re both professionally accomplished, they live in a gorgeous apartment in an exclusive neighborhood of Paris, and they seem to be in love just as much as they were when they first met. But when Fanny accidentally bumps into Alain, a former high school classmate, she’s swept off her feet. They soon see each other again and get closer and closer.

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Allen’s fiftieth movie stars Lou de Laâge, Valérie Lemercier, Melvil Poupaud, Niels Schneider, Elsa Zylberstein, Bárbara Goenaga, Grégory Gadebois, Anne Loiret, Sara Martins, Guillaume de Tonquédec and Arnaud Viard.

Before the premiere, a group of around 20 protesters reportedly marched past the festival’s red carpet, shouting things like “no rape culture” and “a rapist is not a sick man, he is the healthy son of patriarchy.” Allen had just stepped on the carpet when the demonstration began.

It was broken up minutes later by festival police. A day earlier, banners that read “Island of rapists” and “No Golden Lion for predators” went up around the festival to protest Allen and Roman Polanski, whose movie The Palace is up for the top prize this year.

One of the demonstrators told The Hollywood Reporter they were protesting “the rape culture of this festival, which celebrates men accused of assault, while we have an epidemic of femicide in our country.”

The 87-year-old Allen had received a warm welcome from the press who broke out in applause for Allen earlier in the day.

“I have been very, very lucky. I have been lucky my whole life. I had two loving parents and good friends. I have a wonderful wife and marriage, two children… When I started making films all the people chose to emphasize what I was able to do well… they were generous,” Allen said at the film’s press conference.

Allen has previously described Coup de Chance as “a contemporary story of romance, passion and violence set in contemporary Paris.”

“Shot all over the city and a little bit in the countryside, it evolves around a romance between two young people who are old friends and devolves into marital infidelity and ultimately crime,” he continued. “It stars very gifted French actors and actresses, is all in the French language and looks very beautiful as photographed by the great cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro. The rest I’ll leave to surprise.”

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