A Brooklyn smoke shop is the center of neighborhood activity, and the stories of its customers. Conceived as a collaboration with novelist Paul Auster, Wayne Wang's slight but charming film inspired a spin-off movie, Blue In The Face. Despite its tight structure, Smoke, as its title might suggest, is a film about transience.
Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel) works in a shop called The Brooklyn Cigar Company. Every morning, Auggie takes a picture of the shop and one day he shows them to a customer - Paul (William Hurt), a novelist - explaining, "They're all the same, but each one is different from the others."
Paul sees his late wife in one of the snaps, who was shot and killed outside the store. Paul starts fretting about the chain of coincidences that led her to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this self-absorption also brings him to a brush with death when he walks in front of a truck.
Paul is saved by the modest Rashid (Harold Perrineau Jr.), who has his own stories and secrets, and as this goes on, Auggie watches the whole jigsaw fall into place.
Smoke is a Film programme that first aired in 1995 and has been classified a 15 certificate.
