Smoking/No Smoking

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.

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

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.

Resnais' distinguished Nouvelle Vague career (e.g.: Hiroshima, mon amour - Stavisky - Life is a bed of roses) demands that we give this film our serious consideration. A faithful cinematic version, in French, of a play by the great contemporary English dramatist Alan Ayckbourn, the whole enterprise might appear to superficial critics as an impossibly eccentric undertaking: A quintessentially English comedy of manners turned into a film by an entirely French team! How can two such diverse national temperaments as the Gallic and the English possibly cohabit in any meaningful creative enterprise? Well, this is the challenge, of course, and there were once philistines who thought even Shakespeare could never be attempted en Francais. The interest of this film lies, indeed, very largely in the attempts of all concerned to acculturate themselves to an alien perspective; naturally, the results are mixed, and no-one fluent in English would want to deprive themselves of the version originale. However, a talented group of French actors succeed commendably, on the whole, in communicating the very particular English humour of the play. For this chance to increase their repertoire, the actors have to thank Resnais, whose choice of Ayckbourn was far from merely eccentric. He has obviously recognised in the Englishman a person who is as typically obsessed as himself with opening up narrative structure, and in finding more creative ways to tell a story. Though a very strange hybrid (especially for an Anglophone!) the enterprise is no monstrous abortion, but actually a very elegant and worthwhile tribute by our neighbours across La Manche. This is a most attractive film version of Ayckbourn's drama. It even succeeds in retaining a great deal of the downright hilarity of the original, which, in their plays, the fellow-countrymen of Shakespeare have learned early to intermix with the sadder side of life. In other words, we have here a suitably touching, hilarious and clever, and, moreover, a fascinatingly unexpected, version of a great original. Authentic Ayckbourn, comme Resnais authentique. Shame on us in Britain that it is not commercially available here!