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Opening with a PC baiting song about the virtues of smoking, Smoking Causes Coughing then proceeds to trample all over cinema conventions with a smorgasbord that is ostensibly sci-fi but dips deeply into horror and ickiness.
The ‘Tobacco Force’ are a team of brightly coloured jumpsuit clad heroes who, using the power of tobacco toxins: Benzene (Gilles Lellouche) Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Methanol (Vincent Lacoste), Mercury (Jean-Pascal Zadi), and Ammonia (Oulaya Amamra), take down their foes. This is graphically experienced by both viewer and a family as the team surround a turtle type creature and blow it apart spreading blood and guts over a wide area.
The team are kept in line by a small robot Norbert that commits suicide and a hideous gunge drooling rat Didier (Alain Chabat) who as their boss tells them there’s no time to rest as big bad Lizardin is on his way to destroy the earth.
He’s not happy with the crew’s attitude and orders them to a retreat to work on their team building skills. Here they find themselves in a rural area but in a bunker that has all mod cons plus a lady in the fridge running a supermarket inside.
At night they are around a campfire telling stories; (to pad out the film?) – a helmet of profound thought, a talking barbequing Barracuda and a man gradually ripped apart by a woodchipper. All extraordinarily bizarre and funny.
You could say you couldn’t make it up, but writer and director Quentin Dupieux does so and with some aplomb. With styles pinched from 70’s and 80’s kitsch. There’s also strange amalgam of Sleeper and Power Rangers. The former with cheapo future looking sets, the latter through the costumes and helmets.
The whole thing is gloriously off the wall The brief running time hints that while there were ideas aplenty, they maybe didn’t have the time or budget to do them justice. Or the filmmakers just got bored of it all. As the upgraded Norbert robot begins to continually spout ‘Change of Era in Progress’ there is a real feeling that there may be something more profound here. Possibly, and a second or third watch may reveal hidden elements.
Smoking Causes Coughing premiered at Glasgow FrightFest 2023 and will be in UK cinemas from 7 July 2023.
The ‘Tobacco Force’ are a team of brightly coloured jumpsuit clad heroes who, using the power of tobacco toxins: Benzene (Gilles Lellouche) Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Methanol (Vincent Lacoste), Mercury (Jean-Pascal Zadi), and Ammonia (Oulaya Amamra), take down their foes. This is graphically experienced by both viewer and a family as the team surround a turtle type creature and blow it apart spreading blood and guts over a wide area.
The team are kept in line by a small robot Norbert that commits suicide and a hideous gunge drooling rat Didier (Alain Chabat) who as their boss tells them there’s no time to rest as big bad Lizardin is on his way to destroy the earth.
He’s not happy with the crew’s attitude and orders them to a retreat to work on their team building skills. Here they find themselves in a rural area but in a bunker that has all mod cons plus a lady in the fridge running a supermarket inside.
At night they are around a campfire telling stories; (to pad out the film?) – a helmet of profound thought, a talking barbequing Barracuda and a man gradually ripped apart by a woodchipper. All extraordinarily bizarre and funny.
You could say you couldn’t make it up, but writer and director Quentin Dupieux does so and with some aplomb. With styles pinched from 70’s and 80’s kitsch. There’s also strange amalgam of Sleeper and Power Rangers. The former with cheapo future looking sets, the latter through the costumes and helmets.
The whole thing is gloriously off the wall The brief running time hints that while there were ideas aplenty, they maybe didn’t have the time or budget to do them justice. Or the filmmakers just got bored of it all. As the upgraded Norbert robot begins to continually spout ‘Change of Era in Progress’ there is a real feeling that there may be something more profound here. Possibly, and a second or third watch may reveal hidden elements.
Smoking Causes Coughing premiered at Glasgow FrightFest 2023 and will be in UK cinemas from 7 July 2023.