Here’s hoping that Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance (i.e., Stroke of Luck) will debut at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Early this month Jordan Ruimy quoted a buyer who saw Allen’s 50th film at Berlin’s EFM market, and called it “his best film in years.” Allen has described it as a spiritual kin of Match Point — a chilly romantic thriller “charting the story of two young people whose bond leads to marital infidelity and ultimately crime.”

Ruimy had also learned from a person who worked on the film that Coup de Chance has been submitted to Cannes with hopes of screening there in a few weeks time. Presuming this is true, it would be exceedingly strange for Allen’s first French-language film, which is set in Paris and costars many prominent younger French actors, to not debut on the Cote d’Azur.

We know, of course, that among many of the usual Cannes-attending critics there are a fair number of Allen-hating fanatics who are determined to pan it, no matter how good it might be or how much it resembles Match Point or whatever. Simply because they’re committed to his destruction because of the highly questionable Dylan Farrow thing.

Imagine being one of these maniacs. Imagine admitting to yourself in your darkest, most deep-down place, “No matter how this film measures up against Allen’s best films and even if it’s half-good or above average by this standard, I am going to give it a shitty grade…regardless of merit I will do what I can to take this film down.”

Imagine what it must be like to look at yourself in the bathroom mirror under these circumstances.