“Coup!” Movie Review: Los Angeles Times

Mar 24

Excerpt from the LA Times:

As early as the end of 2020, a wave of films began to speak to the COVID-19 pandemic, either explicitly or unintentionally via the limits of their production. Some movies addressed the quarantine and lockdown and the way that our lives had changed. Others simply told stories with just a few people in a single location, which were easier to film safely.

But four years out, we’re getting work that articulates the 2020 pandemic by taking on another pandemic a century ago: the 1918 influenza pandemic. Written and directed by Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark, “Coup!” is a spritely class satire set during this era, though the issues it tackles feel all too timely, which is something all good period pieces should strive for.

One of the film’s antiheroes, Floyd (Peter Sarsgaard), speaks plainly as to what the 2020 pandemic taught us when he tells his employer’s wife, Julia (Sarah Gadon), “Nature has a way of creeping into the modern world, bringing out the beast in some and the beauty in others.” Many would agree that the turmoil and fear of the recent pandemic and lockdown revealed some of our basest human instincts and tendencies, in ways that we are still grappling with.

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