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. 

Beau is Afraid

Beau Is Afraid

Writer & Director – Ari Aster

2023, United States-United Kingdom-Finland-Canada

Stars – Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan

 

If my reservations about ‘Hereditary’ and ‘Midsommer’ was that the brilliance on show relied ultimately too heavily on tropes whilst suggesting something even better or wilder was possible, I thought aster would just do more of the same (which would still be a good thing) or something off-the-rails might be on the cards. (I’m thinking in the same arena as Brandon Cronenberg?) Certainly wilder, with ‘Beau is Afraid’ making no concessions: it’s all tease-the-meaning, a picaresque odyssey for a shambling, injured and anxious protagonist. Indeed, it is anxiety that leads the narrative, rather than just the nightmare logic on display, so there is lot of promise and irresolution, and it does gel a little, eventually, but not in any way that is bound to satisfy. WTF? you’ll say, both amused and frustrated, both positively and negatively.

 

It's overlong and the indulgence is the point, but where ‘Midsommer’ felt appropriately paced (I never felt the 3 hours was overlong), ‘Beau is Afraid’ just keeps going, a series of sections that all offer treats, but it’s true that the first is perhaps best. Because perpetual anxiety is the goal, not answers: not really. If ‘Uncut Gems’ ran on audience anxiety, this film runs on Beau’s, and the feel is something between, say, David Lynch (those creepily smiling medical men!), Lars Von Trier’s trolling and ‘Mother!’: that is to say that it won’t be everyone’s cup-of-black-humour-coffee, and he’s sure to lose a few fans built on his more conventional horror tropes, but it’s a film that will click even more on a second watch when knowing what it is.

 

 

Joaquin Phoenix is reliably great, schlubby, and a little weak-willed but personifying our perpetually apprehensive side that rarely takes centre stage or guides narratives. Especially in the first section where he must try and navigate the farcical piling on from an aggressive outside world (yes, prop the door open with the book; that’ll be okay…).  Slightly unkempt, slightly whiny, slightly defiant, worn down by his paranoia and neurosis. In fact, it’s the first section that best displays this. It moves from its start in urban dread and home invasion, it heads into benign/sinister imprisoned, Freudian confrontation, horror in the attic, folk setting, and autobiography as animated folklore, being theatrically judged… All satirical and verging on the wilfully baffling. Throughout, Phoenix projects intelligence and suffering. How afraid should Beau be?

 

A chief narrative of cinema is the reassurance of overcoming, so this adventure to always being thwarted goes against that, but always with the hint that Beau might be to blame himself, that this is all unreliable narrator stuff; but even this manifests the self-recriminatory side to a worrying personality. Even the black humour is less from schadenfreude than from relating to his misfortune or the absurdity of his humiliations.

 

Yes, it tests patience, and it’s brilliantly rendered and just when you find yourself opting out it will likely so something to drag you back in. Too wilfully abstract, perhaps, and happy to frustrate, which will lose many early on. But if you do click with the black comedy, the amusement of discomfort, and the slapstick of misfortune – and the audience I saw it with laughed many times – or if you enjoy trying to decode puzzle-boxes of symbolism and discomfort, then it will offer many joys and highlights.

 

Tangerine

Tangerine

Director – Sean Baker

Writers – Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch

2015, USA

Stars – Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian

 

Just out of jail when her friend accidentally tells her the truth about her pimp boyfriend’s infidelities, transgender sex-worker Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) goes on a rampage of indignation.

 

Of course, the first thing that prefaces the film is knowing that it was filmed on iPhones (“fitted with Kickstarter-funded lensadapters and software that allowed Baker to lock exposure and focus to his ownspecifications”). Seen some comments that this gives an ugliness, but, to this viewer, it shares the similar over-saturated and guerrilla-style street vibrancy and mobility of ‘American Honey’ or ‘Spring Breakers’. And there is a dominance of streetwise dramatics that allows this “gimmick” to become secondary. Improving on this, the casting of real trans actors and allowing them to improvise the salty language allows and provides verisimilitude and respect. 

This means that a lot of improvised dialogue is bitching and invective, with Sin-Dee’s “wronged lover” reaction proving violent so that we can easily see how she might have got herself arrested. But the last moments of reconciliation make clear the message that, when it comes to the crunch, these are still marginalised people and that all they have are each other.

But what struck me was how much the narrative runs on the tropes of farce. All the strands meet up at Donut Time for comical showdowns and revelations. There’s even a Difficult Mother-In-Law. But what’s more impressive is that, given this, it avoids the typical farce trope of locating humour in the man-in-a-dress symbol. Rather, it saves its ire and mockery for a guy that isn’t honest, living a duplicitous life. 

 

And yet, despite settling for the humour of farce for its denouement, ‘Tangerine’ isn’t truly interested in broad caricatures and allows moments of depth and sympathy for everyone: Razmik (Karren Karagulian) is just as trapped by the constraints of machismo as anyone else is to gender types; it would seem the wife chooses a blind eye; as the subject of Sin-Dee’s wrath, Dinah (Mickey O'Hagan) seems to live a truly scuzzy, restrictive life by comparison, and their gradual moments of bonding speak to shared status trumping personal grievance; even the pimp Chester (James Ransone) seems a little conflicted in confessing his relationship with Sin-Dee. But no one elsee seems to have the freewheeling independence of Sin-Dee and Alexandra, however messy and transitory it may be, and that’s where they come through as triumphant, despite or because of the dangerous world they live in. Through this attention to character, ‘Tangerine’ proves humane and slyly critical of cultural conservatism.

FrightFest Online night #3: 'Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes' & 'Sweetie, You Won't Believe It'

 Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes

Director -Kevin Kopacka

Writers - Kevin Kopacka & Lili Villányi

Stars - Anna Platen, Jeff Wilbusch, Frederik von Lüttichau

2021, Germany

And here’s the giallo one. Expert recreations of the subgenre are the norm now, and Kopacka’s film is no slouch. The title font is a dead giveaway that this will be a pastiche of retro-styles; both story and cinematic nature will be period pieces. There is great set design and plenty of atmosphere as a couple come to the castle she’s inherited and weirdness ensues. He’s a dick, barely capable of speaking without negativity or condescension; she’s a bit of a selfish ice maiden. And then there’s a sharp turn into a shock-scene and meta. A ghost story? A disturbed tale of a couple? The difference to old giallo to recent neo-giallo is that the latter is more playful where the former can often feels like cut-and-paste held together by great aesthetic: ‘Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes’ goes all kind of places, fakes out this way, piles on layers and gothic restlessness, and probably demands more than one watch to work out. It's almost like a melding of 'Knife + Heart' and the work of Cattet and Foranzi. There’s plenty to delve into here.

Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It

Zhanym, ty ne poverish

Director - Yernar Nurgaliyev

Writers - Zhandos Aibassov, Yernar Nurgaliyev & Daniyar Soltanbayev

Stars - Daniar Alshinov, Yerkebulan Daiyrov & Asel Kaliyeva

Kazakhstan, 2020

To get away from his harridan, pregnant wife, Dastan hastily takes a fishing trip with his two friends at the same time bumbling gangsters who have upset a one-eyed super-killer are out putting the pressure on a victim. And that’s not quite everything. It’s a very blokey-bro affair, with the main dynamics being the squabbling and bonding of the male groups, but the fun is in the piling on of elements and spiralling out of control. The humour is broad but mostly hits (there is always a loss of nuance from verbal gags with subtitles, of course) but there is plenty of energy, slapstick, absurdity and gore to keep this funny and entertaining, and the guilelessness of the main characters negates any real mean-spiritedness. It's crowd-pleasing aspirations are worn clearly on its sleeve and it certainly does that.