The entry begins:No one in their right mind would make a movie of The Smoke, a story that ends more or less where it begins. TV could work, though: there's enough science-fictional fol-de-rol here to last at least six seasons.Visit Simon Ings's website.
One major point in The Smoke's favour is that it's a love story, and a fairly classic one at that: a conscientious young man trying and ultimately failing to hold onto a woman who's too bright for him.
Our protagonist, then, needs to be someone who can do awkward. Enter Domhnall Gleeson. He was Caleb in Ex Machina. For a real fish-out-of-water performance, though, you need to reach for Richard Curtis's ghastly 2013 romcom About Time. Is Gleeson playing a 21-year-old or a fourteen-year-old, or what? Add to this Gleeson's rabid, off-his-trolley General Hux in the new Star Wars movies and you have a drably wrapped little nail bomb just waiting to go off. Perfect.
His lover, Fel, is a hard one: not only do her smarts outweigh her looks, she's also funny, damn it. So...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Smoke.
My Book, The Movie: The Smoke.
--Marshal Zeringue
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