[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez, Photo by Brian Brooks]

His age showing a bit, Woody Allen may be quite hard of hearing these days but he still knows how to make the international press corps laugh. And judging from his new film, "Match Point," he still has a cinematic flair. The new movie, still without U.S. distribution just yet after having been financed and shot in the U.K., is the story of a sexy schemer in London's upper crust society, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, at the center of a love triangle between Scarlet Johansson and Emily Mortimer. Allen and cast talked with the press after the world premiere today here in Cannes.

"Match Point" opens with a tennis instructor, played by Rhys Meyers, talking about luck. With a tennis ball suspended in mid-air above a net, the instructor notes that one's fate can be greatly affected by luck, by which side of the net on which the ball falls.

"This film is about luck and it was permeated with good luck. [We were] lucky with the actors and actresses in this film," Woody Allen said, "The film came out pretty well I think and I am usually a harsh critic of my films. I inherited a great cast, great weather, and a fine cameraman, a wonderful art director -- everyone was able to work miracles."

While the film is set in modern London's world of privilege -- Rhys Meyers' character strikes up a relationship with the daughter of a rich and powerful British businessman -- the U.K. production was undertaken in part because of the independence it would give Woody Allen as a filmmaker. "It's become more and more prevalent for the studio and the people that give financing to want to participate in the project. [They] don’t want to be thought of as just a bank, they want involvement," Allen quipped, noting that studios want to shape a script, and see dailies, affect casting. "I couldn’t work that way -- I want the money in a brown paper bag and I'll give them the film a few months later and that’s it. In London the financing was as such that I could work exactly in that way."

But he clarified, "The story would have worked in New York, San Francisco, Paris or London," admitted Allen, who said that the genesis for the idea was the concept of a murder plot explored to cover another crime, a universal story that is certainly not unique to Britain. "I made the film in London because the atmosphere was very good for me creatively." Of course, he emphasized, he will continue to work in New York.

Asked about his motivation for filmmaking in general, Allen offered, "It’s a distraction for me, I make them because if I don’t make them, then I don't have anything to distract me at the moment, [as I am] constantly fighting depression an terror and anxiety. I find like a mental patient in an institution, if they keep the patient busy with finger painting and basket weaving...its therapeutic for me. It's not habitual and it's not for the money -- I do it for myself."