Smoking / No Smoking

Smoking / No Smoking (1993) is Alain Resnais's double feature you can watch online on iFILM — nearly five hours across two films that together spin eighteen different stories about the same small Yorkshire village, each branching from a single moment: whether a woman lights a cigarette or not.

Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi play all eighteen characters between them. The source is Alan Ayckbourn's cycle of eight plays, Intimate Exchanges, each written with two possible outcomes — sixteen distinct endings in total. Resnais translates the stage mechanic through costume, accent, and physical transformation: two faces, eighteen people.

Four César Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. What sets it apart from anything else in French cinema of the decade is the stubbornness of the conceit — an eighteen-character thought experiment about contingency and regret, played with wit and no trace of solemnity. Stream both films online on iFILM.