Smoking *** (1993, Sabine Azéma, Pierre Arditi) – Classic Movie Review 11,366

Alain Resnais meets Alan Ayckbourn for the 1993 French comedy film Smoking.

For the 1993 French comedy film Smoking / No Smoking, director Alain Resnais adapts Alan Ayckbourn’s play Intimate Exchanges (a series of eight plays, each of which has two different endings) into two long twin films corresponding with the two branches following the heroine’s decision to smoke or not.

Resnais eliminates (with the author’s consent) two of the branches he considered to be too English – a mediaeval pageant and a cricket match. He develops the theme that each character adapts and tries to move in the direction most favourable to them.

Though it is entirely set out of doors, Resnais films only in a studio with artificial sets and encourages his two actors (Sabine Azéma, Pierre Arditi) to give highly theatrical and colourful performances in several roles each. The project is claustrophobic and numbing but it is brilliantly clever to sustain this idea of film for two films of 150 minutes each, and there are quite a few laughs and insights along the way.

Continually stopping the film and retelling the story as if somebody had taken a different decision becomes increasingly infuriating as the film moves into its last 45 minutes.

Overlength and the slapstick moments are the main demerits, though it is also hard for British audiences to accept a Yorkshire story played out in French. But still, it is a monumental tour de force of scripting, acting (just the two players in all the parts) and direction. It won five César Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Best Actor Leading Role (Pierre Arditi), Best Writing ((Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui) and Best Production Design (Jacques Saulnier). At the Berlin Film Festival, it won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Single Achievement (Alain Resnais).

Smoking is followed by No Smoking.

In the two twin films, Sabine Azéma plays Celia Teasdale / Sylvie Bell / Irene Pridworthy / Rowena Coombes / and Josephine Hamilton, while Pierre Arditi as Toby Teasdale / Miles Coombes / Lionel Hepplewick / and Joe Hepplewick.

Smoking is directed by Alain Resnais, runs 150 minutes, is released by Pyramide Distribution (France) and Mainline (UK), is written by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, and Anne Dutter and George Dutter (English translation), from the play Intimate Exchanges by Alan Ayckbourn, is shot by Renato Berta, is produced by Bruno Pesery, and is scored by John Pattison.

It is set in the village of Hutton Buscel.

Sabine Azéma was married to Alain Resnais from 1998 till his death in 2014. She appeared in numerous of his films, including Life Is a Bed of Roses (1983), L’Amour à mort (1984) and Mélo.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,366

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