Smoke

Wayne Wang, USA 1995, 108 minutes

Smoke, by Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) and novelist Paul Auster (who wrote the book on which The Music Of Chance was based), is a film about words and what words mean to people. A story about storytellers.

Starting in The Brooklyn Cigar Co., a cigar shop run by Auggie Wren (Harvery Keitel, in one of the most subtle roles we've recently seen him in), we are taken on a leisurely tour of life stopping to meet many and diverse characters on the way. As we follow the path of a paper bag containing five thousand dollars we experience a slice of life from the worlds of the people who come into contact with it. All these people, making their way through the lonely urban landscape might seem to have little in common. But as the film progresses, their paths cross by strange coincidences of fate and, when the smoke finally clears, life for each of them will never be the same again.

This film is unlike your typical Hollwood effort, reading more like a novel than a script. For a film without many special effects or action sequences, it needs to keep the audiences attention through character empathy, suspense and the expectation that only comes with a good script. Featuring an impeccable cast including William Hurt, Stockard Channing, Forest Whitaker, Ashley Judd and talented newcomer Harold Perrineau, Smoke is a film to be enjoyed slowly - like a good cigar.

"Not only one of the most genuinely touching films of the year, but also the finest love letter to the Big Apple since Woody Allen's Manhattan ****" - Empire

Review by Neil Chue Hong
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97