It is of a piece with Woody’s late-life output, a tale of coincidence, chance, and murder that charms at its best and at its worst evaporates upon contact with your eyeballs.

The film’s closing is abrupt and maybe too tidy, but “Coup de Chance” is still a clever little thriller. It displays an admirable economy of storytelling, and its jazz-heavy soundtrack helps maintain a jaunty mood.

This French bonbon, Woody Allen’s best reviewed film in years, is no career landmark. But its blend of humor and homicide shows Allen, 88, still moving forward, creating the kind of film he made his name on, the kind that makes you laugh till it hurts.

Coup de Chance is a simplistic sigh of a film, overwrought and underthought but still professionally executed with a workmanlike if uninspired mise-en-scene and obligingly glowing cinematography thanks to stalwart golden-hour fetishist Vittorio Storaro.