Smoking e No Smoking

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.

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.

I agree this is one of the best films made in France in the 90's decade : it is one you can view again and again without having completely mapped all the plot.

It is like a maze where one likes to get lost once in a while.

The two french actors are among my favorites. They have such a wide range of possibilities that they make this kind of miracle possible as a two-actor double-film possible ! Of course, this is obviously an "exercise of style", and it has a sort of theater atmosphere. But the theater is a very rich place for passion.

It also makes me think of 18th century french theater like Marivaux which showed so much characters under pressure.

Though I don't like Alain Resnais' films (boooooring!), this(these) one(s) is(are) quite (an) exception(s)...The reasons are: the ever witty actors (Popular Sabine Azema and Pierre Arditi), the talented writers (Jean-Pierre Bacri and wife Agnes Jaoui)-very good actors too in other films-, the realistic sets (all shot in studio but with done-on-purpose "studio-like", strange and beautiful), the atmosphere and dialogs (sooo British and likable to my opinion). Though the plot is not that much important (stories and destinies of different characters in a small English village), the interesting points are: 2 separate movies with the same beginning until Sabine Azema (Mrs Tinsdale)decides to smoke a cig' (1st movie) or not (2nd movie), actually just a bait that will change the destinies of the characters though. In both movies you have a wonderful tour de force from start to end, as the 2 actors (only 2 all the time!) play ALL the characters in different disguises (more than 10)going in and out of the screen alternatively without any flaw. I never got bored, the acting is always good and keeping.

I wonder how English-speaking audiences appreciated this unusual French actor's challenge "a la britannic" (hope the 2 movies were just subtitled and not dubbed or you miss everything) and am curious to read further comments from them here in the future.

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.