Working at such a clip it can be hard to discern when his films actually arrive stateside and on what platform, Quentin Dupieux’s second movie of last year, Smoking Causes Coughing, will finally land in the U.S. next month and the first trailer has now arrived. Starring Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, and Oulaya Amamra, the John Waters-approved film follows five superheroes known as the Tobacco Force – Benzene. After a devastating battle against a diabolical giant turtle, the Tobacco Force is sent on a mandatory week-long retreat to strengthen their decaying group cohesion. Their sojourn goes wonderfully well until Lézardin, Emperor of Evil, decides to annihilate planet Earth.
Leonardo Goi said in his review, “Teeming with all kinds of freaks and plots that toggle freely between the real and the absurd, Quentin Dupieux’s films are the work of an inveterate, shamelessly playful raconteur. With ten features now to his name, the musician-turned-filmmaker has amassed an oeuvre whose leitmotif isn’t (just) the director’s penchant for the gonzo, but his passion for storytelling itself. Stories and storytellers abound in his latest, Smoking Causes Coughing. A Russian doll of tales-within-tales, it features one of Dupieux’s most bizarre concoctions yet—which, for a man that gave us a sentient killer tire (Rubber), an oversized fly-turned-pet (Mandibles), and a leather jacket with homicidal powers (Deerskin), is to say plenty. That’d be the Tobacco Force, a group of five superheroes who roam the Earth slaughtering monsters with the power of the toxic substances they borrow their names from—but which, curiously, none of them has ever consumed. (Lest you forget, as a squad member warns a boy at the outset, “smoking is for losers!”)”
See the trailer below.
Smoking Causes Coughing plays at Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and then opens in theaters and on VOD on March 31.