Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Fanny and Jean have everything of an ideal couple: fulfilled professionally, they live in a magnificent apartment in the beautiful districts of Paris, and seem to be in love as on the first day. But when Fanny crosses, by chance, former classmate Alain, she's immediately capsized. They see each other again very quickly and grow closer.
Woody Allen's French-language late-career entry is a competent romantic drama about infidelity and chance in Paris, themes Allen has explored repeatedly throughout his career. The plot is familiar Allen territory—a married woman drawn to a charming intellectual outsider, with fate and luck as thematic underpinnings—and offers few genuine surprises beyond its French-language novelty. The acting from the ensemble is solid but unremarkable. Cinematography captures Paris elegantly but without distinctive vision. The ending, involving the hunting accident and its moral ambiguity, provides some of the film's more interesting texture but doesn't fully elevate the material. Novelty suffers from being recognizably derivative of Allen's own prior work (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point), making it feel like a revisit rather than a reinvention.