Woody Allen's domestic French thriller a return to form for director

Coup de Chance (Stroke of Luck) is Allen's 50^th movie and possibly his last. The 88-year-old has had a long career, beginning in his teens, and his output - as a writer for stage and screens large and small, director, actor, and stand-up comedian - has been prolific. While the quality has been uneven, particularly in recent decades, it's still a remarkable body of work - and more varied than some detractors would have it.

While the new film is shot in Paris with French actors and in French, there are things that relate it to previous Allen movies, from the jazz score to the white-on-black Windsor font titles to an examination of romantic relationships, marriage and, as the title suggests, ruminations on fate and luck.

Initially, Fanny (Lou de Laâge) and Jean (Melvil Poupaud) Fournier seem to be a perfectly happy couple, devoted to each other. They live in a spacious apartment in a wealthy part of Paris and enjoy their careers - she in the art world, he in finance - but still have plenty of leisure time for parties and shooting weekends in the country. And Camille (Valérie Lemercier), Fanny's mother, is a frequent and welcome visitor.

But there are cracks in the facade. Jean is domineering - his friends rather than hers make up their social circle - and Fanny feels a bit like a trophy wife (it's the second marriage for both). His elaborate model train set is a metaphor for his desire to control things and it's hinted some of his doings are shady. Jean insists he makes his own luck. But how true can this be, for him or anyone?

One day, Fanny happens to come across an old high school friend, Alain (Niels Schneider), in the street. He is now a writer, he tells her, and he always had a crush on her. They start having lunch together - with a shared interest in literature and their past, they have plenty to talk about. And, perhaps inevitably, they begin a sexual relationship. Jean begins to get suspicious when he can't reach Fanny by phone, eventually hiring a private investigation firm to tail Fanny. And things get more serious from there.

Coup de Chance has more in common with Allen's dark British-set Match Point (2005) than Midnight in Paris (2011). But the tone feels lighter than the earlier film, partly because veteran cinematographer Vittorio Storaro provides an attractive amber look to the settings, interior and exterior (curiously, although the story takes place over several months, the seasons don't seem to change).

It's hard to know how the script was translated from English to French (which Allen doesn't speak) and back for the subtitles but it works. Allen has pointed out in an interview that you don't need to speak a language to tell if a performance is good. All the actors are well cast: we can see why Fanny would be attracted to Alain, a much sunnier character than Jean. And the story maintains interest to the end.

Allen has never been explicit when it comes to sex and violence and that restraint continues here. The jazz selections are, like the film itself, quite low-key. Even the darkest scenes don't have ominous musical accompaniment or pumped-up tensions, making the horrible seem almost mundane.

If Coup de Chance (Stroke of Luck) does turn out to be Allen's cinematic swan song as writer and director, it wouldn't be a bad place to end.