"Two People Exchanging Saliva" Rewrites the Slap in Cinema

"One of the promotional images for the film "Two People Exchanging Saliva" is a black-and-white closeup of a woman, her face bruised, her nose bleeding, her eyes slack with ecstasy. What are we to make of the feelings that this woman stirs in us: the reflexive response of distress, and then a more cultivated, and therefore repressed, curiosity? What could hurt so good?"

"The film is a fable about intimacy and consumerism set in a dystopian version of Paris where romantic touch, especially the kiss, is forbidden, punishable by death. The citizen in you laughs heartily as this film, a tragicomedy, skewers the hypocrisies and ironies of the repressed West. But the lover inside also aches: the directors, Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata, suspend us in a state of desire and longing, the thwarted kind."

"Since 2021, the Galeries Lafayette, the luxury department store in Paris, has invited filmmakers to use its interiors at night. Singh and Musteata, who are partners in both work and life, exploit the aesthetic of the boutique, a severe geometric glamour, for their Buñuel-esque story of bourgeois sadness. The film is told in chapters. The first is called "Le Jeu" ("The Game")."

One promotional image shows a black-and-white closeup of a bruised woman, nose bleeding and eyes slack with ecstasy, provoking reflexive distress and suppressed curiosity. The film is a fable about intimacy and consumerism set in a dystopian Paris where romantic touch, especially kissing, is forbidden and punishable by death. Directors Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata stage a Buñuel-esque tragicomedy that skewers bourgeois hypocrisy while eliciting thwarted desire. Since 2021 Galeries Lafayette has allowed filmmakers to use its interiors; Singh and Musteata exploit the boutique's severe geometric glamour. The narrative follows Malaise, a naïf shopgirl, and Angine, a wandering customer, as a game of attraction escalates.

Read at The New Yorker