Cigarette After Smoke

Driving home late one winter night, Margaux Specter, a young artist, almost hits a deer stopped in the middle of the road. When the deer scampers off into the forest, Margaux glimpses what looks like a flame coming from a car crashed into a tree. She blinks and the flame is gone. Brushing it off as just something in her head, Margaux continues her drive home. One week later, news of a woman’s disappearance has spread across Lake Tahoe, where Margaux lives in a cottage by herself. Margaux is brought into the local police station for questioning, as the missing woman is Margaux’s next-door neighbor.

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Margaux finishes an order of prints for the shop she sells her art to and packs a basket for a summer picnic by the lake. Completely alone, Margaux swims out to the center of the lake where she becomes disoriented and begins to sink. She is several feet underwater before snapping back to reality and coming up for air.Margaux visits Bruno, her friend at the local nursing home, to play chess and she details what happened at the lake. There is suddenly something very familiar about Bruno that Margaux cannot quite place. Stopping for a cheeseburger and bag of fries after seeing Bruno, Margaux keeps hearing the same song over and over again. Playing in her car, playing on the jukebox at the diner, and again on Margaux’s drive home.

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A few months later, in the early spring of 1993, Margaux is working on some new artwork to sell. She is creating a flip-book and has each little drawing mapped out on her studio walls. Margaux has clearly been crying and is in a state of distress. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees one of her drawings move, and soon her studio walls are an animated jungle of characters. Margaux’s flip-book begins to play out in real life, with her at the center of it.

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Margaux walks along a chessboard that stretches forever and suddenly falls through one of the black squares like a rabbit hole. As she falls through the darkness, black and white flames emerge and surround her. A lake-shaped figure is poured onto her, extinguishing the flames and making Margaux float to the bottom where she hits another chessboard, and the lake drains through a chessboard square. Margaux snaps back to herself and rubs her eyes as she realizes she imagined the entire event.

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Margaux is driving home late at night after spending Christmas with Bruno. She is crying and breathing heavily. Trying her best to prevent a flood of tears. The road in front of her is dark and there is not another car for miles. Snow is falling fast and the windshield wipers are trying to keep up. Margaux starts remembering more moments with Lee as she drives her car faster and faster. Memories from her childhood flash before her eyes until she comes back to reality and sees a car in front of her swerve off the road and disappear into the forest.

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Loss is something that everyone has or will experience at some point in their life. Whether that means the loss of a loved one or the feeling of losing oneself, loss is a part of life.

 

There have been times in my life where I feel like I am losing myself because I get lost in my everyday routine. I sometimes get so caught up in some imaginary idea of who I should be that I forget who I actually am.

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Loss is the central theme at the heart of Margaux’s story as she struggles with the sudden deaths of her mother and younger brother, Lee. At the same time, Margaux is thrown into a police investigation trying to find her missing next door neighbor. The story takes place over a four year period, in which the audience is never clear in which order everything is happening. Stylistically, animated and stop-motion sequences will be a cool way to distinguish between what Margaux imagines and what is actually happening in the film.

 

Under the constant stress of the investigation and the devastation Margaux feels from losing her mom and brother, she grows increasingly paranoid and disconnected from herself. Her constant feelings of guilt and sadness are what drive many of the key scenes in the film. For example, one night as Margaux is finishing up an order of art prints in her studio, she imagines that all her art disappears because she feels empty inside.