Is Woody Allen Trolling His Accusers With His New Movie?

Warning: This article contains details of sexual assault.

Filmmaker, and self-described “poster boy” for the #MeToo movement (seriously) Woody Allen has a new movie out, Coup de Chance, his first ever French language film, which was either a stylistic choice or he has finally run out of Americans who are willing to work with him.

Coup de Chance is about a married woman who has an affair with a writer. But the new lover soon gets whacked by her husband when he finds out about the relationship. So pretty much the same movie that Allen has already made twice before.

Obviously a lot of people don’t want to support this film, or any project helmed by Allen, due to the allegations that he sexually abused his daughter, Dylan Farrow, when she was seven-years-old (see also: all the other creepy shit he’s done). But this movie may be particularly objectionable, because one aspect of the story could potentially be interpreted as a grotesque nod to his alleged crime. 

In their review of the film, NPR noted that Coup de Chance contains one “appalling” detail — the villainous husband character is obsessed with model trains. “Could Allen be referencing his own off-screen scandals, and to what purpose?” the reviewer asked.

That’s because a model train set was one of the most important elements in the case against Allen. By Dylan Farrow’s account, she was instructed to play with a toy train set during the alleged assault. “To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains,” Farrow wrote in a 2014 open letter published by The New York Times. 

But Allen and his supporters have attempted to discredit Farrow by suggesting that “there was no train set in the attic.” Then came the 2021 HBO documentary series Allen v Farrow, which presented a particularly damning piece of resurfaced evidence: a 1992 police diagram of the attic where the alleged abuse took place, and it clearly referenced a “toy train track.”

In his 2020 memoir Apropos of Nothing, Allen tried to argue that the train set didn’t exist, claiming that Farrow’s description of the toy train was “a fresh creative touch,” a “plot twist” that had been belatedly added to make her story seem more “credible.” He pointed out that the train “never came up a single time during all the months of investigation in any of Dylan’s numerous interviews.” But according to Allen v Farrow, the toy train set was brought up in “at least seven interviews with (Dylan’s) pediatrician and key investigators in 1992.” 

So, the exact opposite of what Allen said?

Which is all to say that Allen sticking a model train set into his first movie since all of this was brought to the fore by the documentary seems pretty weird. His fans might argue that it’s just a coincidence, but come on, Allen has made roughly 5,000 movies (give or take) in his lifetime, and only now decided to write about a character who’s obsessed with toy trains?

If we were to further pick apart this movie’s message, the train-loving husband kills his wife’s lover, a jazz-loving writer literally named “Alain” (subtle, Woody). So the Allen surrogate falls victim to a man whose favorite hobby reflects the controversial evidence against Allen? It’s as if Allen took his cultural cancellation and twisted it into a story about unjust murder in which he is the victim. In his dumb book, Allen similarly compared himself to a victim in a Hollywood movie: “I was now the real-life protagonist of a drama about an innocent person, wrongly accused.” 

I mean, sure, it is just a train set, but if O.J. Simpson had ever written and directed a movie in which one of the characters kept trying on gloves, you have to admit, it would be tough not to focus on that one detail. 

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