Movie Reviews
‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ movie review: a quintessential Quentin Dupieux experience
Quentin Dupieux – ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’
In recent years, the discourse surrounding contemporary cinema has mostly morphed into endless unproductive shit-flinging contests on Twitter and semi-funny memes about the messianic status Christopher Nolan’s rabid fandom has bestowed upon him. Amidst this constant chatter about the death of cinema and the tyranny of Marvel, Quentin Dupieux has been continuously working on a new kind of cinematic experience that redefines the medium itself.
Having developed a significant cult following due to the niche appeal of his surreal romps, such as Rubber and Deerskin, Dupieux has embarked on a fascinating trajectory in the world of modern cinema. Always bold and uncompromising in his vision, the French auteur has refused to cave in to the inescapable demands of the mainstream. Fortunately, this is also the case with his latest project – Smoking Causes Coughing.
The superhero genre is obviously in a crisis right now, battered by the unavoidable symptoms of a dead culture that is eating itself from the inside out. While shows like The Boys and Invincible have tried to weaponise their own critiques of the genre, it all inevitably turns into post-ironic self-criticism. Smoking Causes Coughing does not exist within that extensive dichotomy, which is why it is free enough to do whatever the hell it wants and create an alternate form of expression in the process.
Dupieux’s new venture is an interesting comedy anthology revolving around a team of five superheroes called the Tobacco Force, who are named after the individual toxic parts of cigarettes. Starring the likes of Vincent Lacoste and Adèle Exarchopoulos, it’s a film that refuses to take itself seriously which is always refreshing to see when the premise involves adults running around in tights. Dupeiux leans into this direction to revitalise the genre, incorporating wildly innovative ideas that can only come from his mind.
The aesthetic frameworks of superhero films have naturally become highly codified, resulting in the regurgitation of the same representations. Interestingly, Smoking Causes Coughing calls back to the schlocky sci-fi pornos from the 1970s that used cheap practical effects and strange humour to lighten people up when they needed it the most. In doing so, Dupieux liberates it from the uniform visual logic that most other superhero flicks automatically adhere to.
Previously, Dupieux’s surreal journeys have worked so well because they have been uninterrupted descents into insanity. In this project, the filmmaker decided to make the narrative fragmented by stringing together short doses of madness in the form of mini-narratives. Ranging from a batshit crazy story about a sentient bucket of blood and mangled organs to an anecdote about a woman who becomes homicidal after discovering a helmet that isolates her from the world, it’s a collection that will make you think about questions you didn’t know existed.
Even though the narrative flow is impeded by this structure, Smoking Causes Coughing is original and funny enough to transcend those minor limitations. Using omnipresent themes like the threat of an impending apocalypse, Dupieux creates one of the strangest ecocritical commentaries in recent memory and reimagines the archetype of the hero. As far as Power Rangers parodies go, this might be one of the very best.
Movie Reviews
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Movie Reviews
Boy Kills World: Bill Skarsgard stars in blood-soaked thriller
2/5 stars
Exploding onto the screen like the bastard son of a dozen 1980s action movies and an arcade full of beat-’em-up video games, Boy Kills World is a whirl of blood-soaked martial arts and jet black humour that barely pauses for breath.
Over the course of two hours, Boy tears through the hierarchy of a near-future dystopia in the hopes of destroying the regal Van Der Koys, responsible for murdering his family.
The hook to Boy Kills World is that, because of his debilitated senses, Boy narrates his every waking moment through an incessant internal monologue, in a voice lifted from his favourite childhood video game, Super Dragon Punch Force 3.
Comedian and voice artist H. Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob’s Burgers) provides Boy with the vocal identity for his relentlessly self-aware, comic-book-style voice-over.
Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) rules with an iron fist, staging an annual “culling”, whereby a dozen enemies of the state are ceremonially executed in front of the people.
Such a fate befell Boy’s own mother and sister, and he has spent the years since living in hiding, honing his body into a lethal weapon under the brutal tutelage of Yayan Ruhian’s unforgiving Shaman.
Once Boy is set in motion, there is no stopping the swathe of bloody carnage he unleashes.
First-time writer-director Moritz Mohr shot the film in South Africa, which lends it a visually distinctive otherworldliness, but beyond this cosmetic exoticism, Boy Kills World ploughs a painfully familiar path.
Its sustained tone of fast-paced choreography, splashy violence and knowingly irreverent humour soon becomes exasperating, leaving it with no other option than to barrel towards a wholly predictable finale.
Skarsgard’s performance must be commended for its physicality, but ultimately Boy Kills World becomes as much of a physical ordeal to watch as for its hero to survive, and will surely prompt all but the most resilient of viewers to tap out long before justice is served.
Movie Reviews
Movie review: The Teacher's Lounge – Law Society Journal
Idealistic young teacher Carla Nowak (played with anxious intensity by Leonie Benesch) is a new arrival at a German secondary school. Well-meaning and empathetic, she is the conductor of a peaceful classroom. A shot of Carla from behind, her arms beautifully outstretched, suggests this is her daily orchestra. She is organised and dedicated, if a touch closed off from her fellow teachers.
But when a student of Turkish origin is accused of stealing money, and Carla’s own surveillance of the teachers’ lounge indicates the guilt of Friederike Kuhn, an administrative staff member, we realise she’s far from in control. Carla’s star pupil, Lukas (Mrs Kuhn’s son), resents the accusation aimed at his mother. The students rally around him and the teachers, divided by internal disagreements, seem almost powerless to assert control.
Long gone is the strict discipline of The 400 Blows or Dead Poets Society. The students in the film seek neither escape to the outside world nor solace in the rich inner worlds sparked by poetry. As they have been taught, these students seek answers. They seek justice. As the editor of the student newspaper boldly declares that, outside of truth, “everything else is just PR.”
The path to maturity for the students seems not to lie in compromising their ideals but in sticking to them ever more fiercely. It’s a wonderful inversion of what the Germans call “Bildung,” the tradition which examines the formative years of youth, marked as it is by a certain moral education. But the students cede no ground. They are uninterested in the murky give-and-take of the adult world. Their world is zero sum.
Indeed, it is the teachers’ uncertain sense of themselves as disciplinarians and moral leaders that provides so much fuel for the plot. They do not know who they are, and the students grasp it quickly. Carla in particular has ideals, but does she really believe in them? Çatak satirises the speed at which the right to privacy, freedom of the press, and the concept of innocent until proven guilty are upended in the search for a thief. It’s quite an achievement, especially given that thrillers are rarely satirical, and satires seldom thrilling.
The film moves so briskly that viewers can be forgiven for failing to notice that on Carla’s surveillance video, Mrs Kuhn’s blouse is patterned with little stars. It’s a knowing nod to Germany’s tragic past. That Mrs Kuhn also represents a slightly different power struggle within the school – between the teachers and the administrative staff – adds more complexity to The Teachers’ Lounge. One can only hope that the next films concerning the consequences of accusation are so richly engaging.
Verdict: Five stars
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