Under the Radar
European Premier
John Michael McCarthy/ USA 2009/ 91 min/ tbc
Cult indy film director Mike McCarthy’s Cigarette Girl has a great premise: in a not so distant future, smoking has been outlawed and smokers have been banished to an outer city ghetto called ‘The Smoking Section’. So far so Silk Cut. Cori Dials plays our titular heroine, invoking the spirit of Dita Von Teese, Betty Paige and Cat Slater. Her gran has just quit her 60 year smoking habit ‘the hard way’ so Cigarette girl decides to give up a life of cigarette peddling, and quit smoking. And that’s just for starters, she also tries to save a runaway, kill the evil mobster lord who runs The Smoking Section, and exorcise the ghost of Marboro Man who keeps trying to get her to light up.
Cigarette Girl has a great 50s comic book look to it, and a vampy schlock noir aesthetic, but the Mike Hammer-esque voice over is in danger of simply telling us the story twice, and it makes an already slow set up feel even more laborious. The weakness of the plot and the hammy dialogue means the pace never really picks up, and it just goes
to show that even if your lead look does look nice in her bra and pants, you need a good story to keep an audience’s attention. If cult noir is your bag then ignore the warnings and take a drag anyway, but in the end, Cigarette Girl has a bad case of style over substance, a bit like the fags themselves really.
Showing @ Filmhouse 22nd June 21:15