Why do French directors think it is cool to smoke?

They perhaps think it's realistic? I'm currently studying in France and always got a good laugh when other erasmus/international students (mostly the Americans) would make remarks about the amount of smokers there are here. And it's true. out of the ~1000 students that go to my school, it's faster and easier to name the ones that don't smoke, than those who do. On the other hand, the university where I study at home, most days it feels like there's only a handful that smoke, and they get chastised for it from their peers. It's simply dropped out of the lifestyle in anglo-saxon countries so that it's nearly nonexistent in our cinema, and therefore become 'shocking' to folks such as yourself.

She killed herself because the man who wrote and directed it thinks that women cease to exist without the man they love in their life.

Notice the Mother left her old shoes outside her old apartment in the end? She no longer knew herself now that her annoying and unreliable ex-husband was dead. She was now somebody else, or just a shell, who knows; but it was made apparent that the woman who wore those shoes was dead too.