Two People Exchanging Saliva
Entry updated 23 March 2026. Tagged: Film.
French film (2024; original title Deux personnes échangeant de la salive). Misia Films, Preromanbritain, Galeries Lafeyette. Written and directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh. Cast includes Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Luàna Bajrami and Aurélie Boquien. 36 minutes. Black and white.
In an unspecified Dystopia which looks like contemporary Paris, kissing is a crime punishable by death, transgressors being sealed inside coffin-like boxes and thrown off a cliff. In order to stave off temptation, people eat garlic and refuse to brush their teeth, and have their breath checked as they enter work. Payment for all transactions is made in slaps to the face, the number of slaps commensurate to the value of the item being bought.
A young woman, Malaise (Bajrami) takes a job in a department store, where she serves and begins growing close to a customer, Angine (Amir Ebrahimi), inciting the jealousy of Malaise's manager, Pétulante (Boquien). Despite seeing a woman in the store arrested and taken away for execution for attempting to kiss her husband, both Malaise and Angine (whose husband designs the boxes that are used for the executions) use toothpaste in the hope of secretly kissing. However, Pétulante overhears Malaise in the bathroom and invents a story that Malaise attempted to kiss her, leading to Malaise's arrest and death. A final flashback reveals that Angine had been to Malaise's apartment but lacked the courage to enter, so never had the chance to share any intimacy with her.
This is an extremely elegant and stylish film which manages to create a fully inhabited world in a short running time without any explanation or extraneous information. The message of the death of intimacy in an emotionally sterile world is a familiar one, but given freshness by the originality of the dystopia depicted, aided by the gleaming monochrome photography – which gives an alien sheen to the department store in which most of the film takes place – and excellent cast.
As well as numerous festival prizes, the film shared the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. [CWa]
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