A prolific director, screenwriter, editor and cinematographer, Dupieux sets a new standard with two films in the same year. With an absurdist story in drawers, he is back with a vengeance, with a counter-acting cast and a surprising «Tabac Force».
Quentin Dupieux is considered to be an outsider in the French film world, and for good reason: his irreverence, impeccable casting and skilful use of pastiche make him an artist on the bangs. After a Incredible but true released this year - and frankly disappointing - he offers a work of pop and retro inspiration that guarantees the success of his previous films.
From the very first minutes, no one familiar with the director will be surprised: the cinematography pays homage to 1970s French cinema, the shots are polished and the dialogue, peppy and rhythmic, works. Smoking makes you cough begins with the presentation of its team of superheroes fighting a latex monster, a tribute to the finest episodes of Power Ranger. Not surprising, given the aesthetic of the costumes - one-piece blue and full-face white helmets - until the members decide to «give him cancer» and the monster explodes in hectoliters of blood and guts to make Monty Python blush.
Embedding and horror
Members of the famous «Tobacco Force» are invited to a lakeside forest retreat to strengthen their team spirit. This team building will be an opportunity to revisit the «campfire movie» style, where the stories told are all a clever mix of potty humor and horror. If the subject doesn't seem to hold up for more than five minutes, we'd be forgetting the universe we're in. The first story introduces some of Dupieux's familiar faces (Adèle Exarchopoulos and Grégoire Ludig), but also newcomers (Doria Tillier and Jérôme Niel) in a hilarious retelling of a vacation meltdown. The second story presents Blanche Gardin in a position as uncomfortable as it is surprising, where graphic violence rubs shoulders with laughter.
But what would these superheroes be without a leader and an antagonist? The brilliant Alain Chabat plays Chef Didier, a mutant rat puppet whose mouth is constantly dripping green slime. Pure inspiration from Feebles (Peter Jackson, 1989) for the design, the actor delivers a total performance by manipulating the pants while dubbing him. The big bad is played by an under-performing Benoît Poelvoorde, whose screen presence is so anecdotal that it could have been cut from the film. We miss his considerable score in To the station! in 2018.
A weak script held together by subplots
On the other hand, its history Smoking makes you cough is lacking. While the beginning of the film is promising, we soon realize that it only serves to initiate sub-stories that would not otherwise have made it into a full-length feature. Dupieux's use of narrative entanglement sacrifices the development of his main characters, some of whom have only one character trait, or even serve only to support the arc of another protagonist.
Likewise, we hope that everyone will have «their own story to tell», so as to postpone the film's inevitable fishtail ending. Given the choice of short-circuiting the expected pattern for a superhero movie by sending them into retreat, one suspects that action will not be the main quality of Smoking makes you cough. Nevertheless, the side stories maintain a certain interest, to the point where they might even have deserved an hour and twenty minutes of treatment.
All in all, we'll remember a fine overall performance from the performers and a sense of comic tempo that works every time, as always with Dupieux. «Inconsistent entertainment», as he himself puts it, for want of a properly developed story with great potential.
Write to the author: mathieu.vuillerme@leregardlibre.com
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Photo credits: © CHI-FOU-MI PRODUCTIONS - GAUMONT
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