Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment

What does love look like? In mainstream film and television, it usually means grand gestures, dramatic fallings out and reunions – and all of these highs and lows navigated by people with remarkable facial symmetry, of course. The short documentary Couple in a Room Smoking Cigarettes (2020) invites viewers to bear witness to a less romantic, although, for many around the world, perhaps more relatable form of love. Following Jadwiga and Wiesław Wójcikowie over the course of a day, Katarzyna Gondek, a Polish-born filmmaker based in Belgium, offers a close-up look at the quotidian routines that define their lives together. Taking place wordlessly and entirely within the confines of their apartment, the rhythms of toe-tapping, song-humming, snoring, coffee-drinking and, as the title promises, the lighting of many a cigarette, become mesmerising as the film unfolds. With a soft focus, sharp edits and close attention to the sounds of everyday life, the production finds an unlikely poetry in the unremarkable paces of the couple’s partnership.

Via Short of the Week