Best known for a film about a sentient, homicidal tyre (Rubber) and a talking fringed jacket (Deerskin), French writer-director Quentin Dupieux has been busy ploughing a filmographical furrow as idiosyncratic and instantly recognisable as that of, say, Wes Anderson. Tune into his uniquely surreal frequency – wackadoodle ideas delivered with utterly deadpan sincerity – and there is much to enjoy. Those who fail to may find it insufferable.
His latest is a kind of horror anthology, which directly references Tales from the Crypt, comprising three tales (although one of them is so short, it’s really more like two tales). The first is about two couples who rent a vacation home, where one of the women (Anaïs Demoustier) finds a 1930s ‘thinking helmet’, enabling a rare sense of peace that leads to a reappraisal of her marriage and her friends – with horrific consequences. Is it a pointed parable about the effects of disengaging from our hectic lives just long enough to re-evaluate them? Or just classic Dupieux daftness? Another is about a young man unfazed by the malfunctioning machine which has ground him to bits. Is it a satirical take on young people’s indifference to the crushing gears of oppression they face? Or simply, you know, Dupieux being Dupieux?
Most bizarre of all is the framing device, for which adjectives like ‘zany’, ‘eccentric’ and ‘whimsical’ fall far short. Essentially, the stories are told at a lakeside team-building retreat for ‘Tobacco Force’. Five costumed superheroes named after the deadliest ingredients in tobacco, they’re overseen by a Muppet-like rat, whose hand-rod control mechanism, beady red eyes and constant stream of green drool do little to diminish his appeal to women. But just as Tobacco Force is enjoying some campfire R&R, a sinister entity known as ‘Lizardin’ threatens to destroy the planet ‘by the end of the year’, forcing our heroes to cut short their vacation and… well, that would be telling.
Tune into Dupieux’s uniquely surreal frequency and there’s much to enjoy
Smoking Causes Coughing is as barking mad as you’d expect from the man behind 2020’s Mandibles (two chancers hope to get rich by training a giant fly they find in the boot of their car) and last year’s Covid-delayed Incredible But True (a couple buys a house with a time machine in the basement). The portmanteau structure suits Dupieux’s demented sensibility, providing a wildly varied yet consistently entertaining dose of bafflement and bemusement.
In UK cinemas Jul 7.
