Smoking/No Smoking

It won 1993 Cesar award. Those are two films. Smoking and No smoking. All characters played by two comedians. Set is meant to look like pictures used to teach English to French school-children. Both films start the same except in one she decide to quit smoking while in the other she chain smokes. Then what if... and it goes off with a whole different ending for I don't know how many times. Every time you'd think this is the end and then it explores a different possibility. One advise: don't rent both films the same day. Each lasts forever.

This is one of the most intelligent and elegant movies ever made. And, still, it's funny and somehow happy. Of course, if you don't like minimalism and a playful conception, you will not love it. But you have to see it. Growing old, Alain Resnais becomes younger and fresher. It's far younger than all the Tarantinos. He's more free. Free from the author's giant ego, free from the film-industry mechanics, free from the boredom of 90% of "high" french movies, free from the film-language, free from everything but its own structure. Great actors, great conception. The only limit is that it's too new and too theatrical for the normal viewer. It requires a watcher with the same kind of freedom. Sorry for my broken English. However, You have to see it, really.

Puzzling mess from Alain Resnais.

Resnais's films are always joint works with their usually renowned screenwriters. The truth is that the quality of his films depends a lot on those collaborators.

I'm not quite sure what interest he may have found in Alan Ayckbourn's supposedly witty comedy, but the five-hour-plus result starts out as slightly unfunny stupidity, and after an hour turns into one of the most mind-numbing movies ever made , whose viewing is an unnecessary torture.

The premise of the staging is artificiality: decorated with painted curtains, two actors each representing several characters, forcing the play to be a succession of duets, and the use of makeup, costumes as exaggerated and irritating as the performances.

The reason for this mess cannot be just the stupid game of showing the diversity of developments that can be triggered by minor decisions, or the simple show-off of the actors in different roles. At first we suspect that there must be something more to it, apart from the apparent and irritating stupidity without any substance. But after an hour and a half it seems like that's it, a boring game that promises to continue for another four hours. Inconceivable.

Resnais left us a handful of fine films, always harnessing his eye for brilliant framing and his revolutionary concept of editing, to stage scripts by famous collaborators. But very often, when the starting texts were not particularly valuable, his films remain pedantic exercises in style. Over time he got involved in the most unlikely projects, none more disastrous than this Smoking/no smoking whose possible original interest on stage is totally lost when it goes to the big screen.

Alain Resnais ranks among the major French director but it is hard to point out a topic in such a large panel of different movies from 'Je t'aime-Je t'aime' to 'On connait la chanson'. It's not so obvious to recognize at first sight the Resnais touch. Maybe, the only possible approach of Resnais cinema is to distinguish in it a kind of deep exploration of relationship between humans. It's obvious in 'Mon oncle d'Amerique' but it seems that Resnais has devoted himself to reveal fundamental basis of relation/communication that can exist between two human beings, as humans being in space and time and their cultural background. And, with its no-narrative structure, Smoking/No smoking is a wonderful playground for analyzer Resnais, showing beyond laugh (Sabine Azema's nervous breakdown in Smoking is one of the funniest moment of cinema I've enjoyed) and tears, silence and words, all the nuances that stem from our human part, regardless of what is due to facts and events.

Once you get past the fact that French artistes have seen fit to adapt a set of Ayckbourn plays for the screen and leave the setting in Yorkshire rather than shifting it a la Hollywood to the Jura so that all the place-names, notices, etc are in English and only the dialogue is French, there is much to enjoy. Not least the adaptation by the stand-out team of Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri who, even as I write, may well cop a gong at Cannes (I write this on the final day of this year's festival and their Comme d'un Image, which is also directed by Jaoui must, if there is any justice, cop a Best Screenplay Award and, in passing show Jury Foreman Quentin Tarentino how the big boys do it) and who prove here that they can adapt other writers as well as writing brilliant originals. It can take a while for the audience to adapt - especially a non-theatregoing audience - to the sets which are clearly theatrical and respect the conventions of theatre so that if a character enters a house we, the audience cannot follow as in a conventional film but must remain outside until they emerge, often as another character because that is another coup, Sabine Azema and Pierre Arditi handle ALL the acting chores between them and revel in ringing the changes on nine characters. Changes of scene and/or time lapses are marked by large 'picture-book' cards of the type used to teach infants to read universally. Weighing in at two and a half hours each this brace represents either a long haul or great value, yer pays yer money an' yer takes yer choice. As for me, I'd walk a mile for a Camel. 8/10