Smoking / No Smoking (1993)

Smoking / No Smoking is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1993, directed by Alain Resnais.  The film stars Sabine Azéma, Pierre Arditi and Peter Hudson.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


In a village in Yorkshire, Celia Teasdale, the wife of a school headmaster, takes a rest from her spring cleaning.  Seated in her garden, she considers whether she should light a cigarette or not.  Little does she know that her decision will result in two totally different outcomes.  When she decides to smoke a cigarette, she is visited by Lionel Hepplewick, the school caretaker who has agreed to help out in her garden.  Celia confesses that her husband no longer loves her, that he has taken to drink and risks losing his job.  When Celia returns to the house, Sylvie, her maid, appears and tries to engage Lionel’s interest...   Now, if Celia has abstained from that cigarette a different set of circumstances would have arisen.  Miles Coombes, her husband’s best friend, arrives and starts commiserating with her over her husband’s drunkenness and professional lapses.  In fact, this is just a pretext, for Miles is secretly in love with Celia...

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