Review by Beatrice On 03-May-2023
I am a realist, I can't close my eyes to the surrealism of life.
(Stanislaw Jerzy Lec)
The Force of Tobacco consists of 5 superhero vigilantes named Nicotine, Ammonia, Mercury, Benzene, Methanol.
The first scene shows them fighting a giant turtle Power Ranger-style, against which they exhale the substances contained in tobacco, each based on their own name.
The powerful turtle will explode like a volcanic eruption, and the outflow of colossal materials will also end up on the bodies of unsuspecting tourists trapped on a rock by the tobacco superhero's son.
While Benzene, the most experienced superhero, points out the idiocy of the smoking father, the motivation for the negativity of smoking will be: "smoking makes you cough".
However, the leader of the vigilantes, a sort of remote-controlled Muppet show, rather sensitive to female seduction, invites them to go to a specially designed house in a forest, a sort of Big Brother house, where they have to regain the spirit of teamwork that is being lost.
In this futuristic dwelling, there is a refrigerator/supermarket, and when they open the door, a lady can deliver to the superheroes anything they desire.
In the idleness of the days spent in the bucolic place, a sort of challenge begins between those who tell the most horrific story.
Dupieux thus cuts out for each story the insert of a short film within the feature film through which the narration of the present becomes representable.
He adds surrealism upon surrealism, a sort of ontology of the absurd in the style of the French director's brand.
A parade of hilarious eccentric scenes among thinking masks and mouthless bodies.
Meanwhile, the leader/rodent connected remotely informs them that there is no more time, Lizarden, the lizard/man, an atavistic enemy, a sort of devil at work, is bringing the earth to apocalypse, and therefore the world is destined to end, but there is a but, and this will be decided by a program inserted in a robot delivered for the mission of the five superhero vigilantes. Only those who live will know, and those who see will understand what it's about.
A series of prestigious and famous actors are part of the cast of this incredible Dupieux film, all excellent performers of images and lines on the border of reality...
Eighty minutes of pure entertainment: the audience is subjected to a regime of disbelief because paradox seems the most obvious thing.
The concept is there and it is strong, but often it is disqualified by the world of cinema that is not used to finding meaning in the tragicomic madness of an apparently too superficial representation to be deep, too senseless to be astute, too frivolous to be conscious.
Dupieux is now an unmistakable brand, highly recognizable in his unstoppable chameleon-like ability: a rather rare flair in the world of cinema, that of making people reflect through surreal representations and ingenious ideas.
The talent of that "comedy that implies the indispensable experience of seriousness, while seriousness does not imply at all the experience of comedy," as Alberto Moravia argued.
03-May-2023 by Beatrice
