Smoking Causes Coughing - Fumer fait tousser

Smoking Causes Coughing

Fumer fait tousser

Writer & Director – Quentin Dupieux

2022, France

Stars – Gilles Lellouche, Vincent Lacoste, Anaïs Demoustier

Dupieux films often start with the WTF? element upon realising what the premise is, followed by a steady run of amusement as you settle into the surreal humour. ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ – which is, alone, a perverse title for a Super Sentai parody – has that and digressions aplenty, being somewhat a portmanteau. These smaller stories are great too. If Dupieux’s last film, ‘Incredible But True’, introduced some genuine human frailty into his irreverence and surrealist farce, just as ‘Deerskin’ was off-beatly disturbing, ‘Smoking’ gives free reign to his silliness and non sequiturs. Suicidal robot team member? A larder supermarket? Sleeping in hero helmets? A grotesque puppet-sensei, the kind found in low budget superhero series for kids, but one that turns all the women on? But we are talking a superhero team ridiculously based upon smoking, although it doesn’t quite fully satirise branding.

And yet with one tale shows that Dupieux can’t help tweaking slashers (ref. ‘Rubber’ and ‘Deerskin’) and satirising the genre (in one of the film’s best gags, one character can’t help selfy-ing even when confronted with a horror scenario and would rather argue her right to do so than act in the interest of survival). And the barracuda… well. Dare it be said that this quietly distinctive-divisive director is finding a way for his absurdist schtick to nudge the commercial? If ‘Incredible But True’ had existential concerns about the self, ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ goes for the scatological comedy, punctuated by horror gross-outs. It never adds up to much, but never has Dupieux’s silliness been so digressive, appealing, consistent, and not just amusing and clever but funny.