Smoking / No Smoking

A production set in the English provinces and shot as two separate films. The opening is the same. A woman stands in a garden with a cigarette in her hand; if she smokes it one story begins, if she does not, another. From there the narrative branches. A choice is made at the end of every scene and the film continues according to it. The people are a headmaster, his wife, a gardener, a teacher and a few others in the town. The same people meet in different orders. In one version they marry, in another they never speak; one dies in one story and lives in the next. What the narrative is interested in is not events but possibility: the film shows how a five-minute decision changes what happens five years later, and builds it like a diagram. The real trick of the structure is in the casting. All nine characters are played by two actors; the clothes, the voice and the bearing change, and the film does not hide it. The sets are deliberately false as well. The garden, the hill and the house are painted backdrops; the narrative makes no claim to realism. The source is a cycle of plays by Alan Ayckbourn. The writer built the work as branching scenes and the film takes that structure directly. The two films were shown separately. Each runs over two hours, and watched together the same events repeat with different outcomes. The production won several awards at France's national cinema awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi are the cast. Alain Resnais directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes formal experiment and theatrical cinema. Who it is not for: anyone without patience; the total running time is long, there is much repetition, and the same scenes have to be watched several times.