Looking awry
on April 15, 2008
in misc
Last year, when a colleague teacher who was using Coffee and Cigarettes at a lesson, tentatively flashed the dvd disc, the title got penciled in and patiently awaited its turn. Until a few months ago, when we discovered what a jewel it was! In this real curio, shot in black and white, about two dozens of distinct characters, coupled separately in eleven short episodes, chat over coffee (or occasionally tea) puffing away clouds of smoke.
You can hardly call the episodes cinema, they are very theatrical in form. The camera is more than restricted, it just shifts sideways, capturing the talkers’ busy faces, and every now and then goes overhead to capture tables laden with cups of coffee and cigarette stubs.
The beauty of Coffee and Cigarettes, however, is the stories they bring to the tables. Stories within stories. Actors mostly play themselves – a pair of British luvvies, cocaine-demented rockers, sleep-deprived rappers, whingeing and cursing Italians, ageing New York bohemians … they all drag their their own lives and careers with them, and as they are getting high on caffeine and nicotine, they unfold most peculiar, at times idiotic, stories to share onscreen. In between thin coffee-table dialogues and silences they gaze or cast glances at each other. Once absent-minded, intoxicated, or mysterious, at other times curiously checking the opponent’s reaction, pensive or crafty, adding more, getting deeper, revealing some momentary truth.
And there is always a story that happened before they appear sitting round the table, and a story to be continued, when their figures fade into black at the end of each episode.
