Some films work like mirrors: from a distance, we recognize the outline of the world we live in, but the closer we get, the stranger the rules holding that reality together start to feel. Others function more like emotional lab experiments, where familiar ideas are rearranged until they become almost unrecognizable. It’s in this uneasy territory that “Two People Exchanging Saliva” settles in, inviting the viewer to decode a society that seems logical only until its cracks begin to show. The short by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh takes place in an alternative version of the present, structured around rigid hierarchies and social codes that are as arbitrary as they are oppressive. There are those who serve and those who benefit, those who want to climb and those already shielded by privilege, and these divisions are enforced through bizarre rules that regulate even the most intimate gestures. The story follows Angine (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), a refined customer, and her encounter with Malaise (Luàna Bajrami), a young cashier on her first day at work, under the competitive gaze of Pétulante (Aurélie Boquien), a seasoned employee who has built her identity around the flawless performance demanded by the system. The conflict between the two clerks is less about professional efficiency and more about who truly understands, or pretends to understand the unspoken rules of that world. The film’s central provocation emerges when those rules are laid bare: pleasure is treated as taboo, affection as deviation, while pain becomes a kind of symbolic currency, almost a trophy proudly displayed by the privileged. The idea of “exchanging saliva,” described in an almost clinical way and stripped of explicit eroticism, gains subversive weight precisely because it’s banal in our reality and forbidden in theirs. The short creates an unsettling game between disgust and desire, where humiliation blurs into reward and the longing for connection turns into a transgressive act. The direction is confident and elegant, guiding the story with a hypnotic rhythm that favors suggestion over explanation. Still, that choice comes at a cost. The script raises structural questions that remain unanswered and weaken the internal logic of the universe it presents. If payment happens through consensual violence, what exactly is the function of work? If money seems irrelevant or nonexistent, why do some characters need to submit to daily labor while others simply receive pain as a form of transaction? These gaps don’t invalidate the film, but they do create a sense of conceptual incompleteness, as if the world is more compelling as an idea than as a fully sustained system. Visually, the short is impeccable. The black-and-white cinematography builds a cold, geometric, emotionally sterile city, where light and shadow sketch emotional states more than physical spaces. Costumes and production design reinforce this antiseptic atmosphere, creating characters who seem trapped in a constant performance of sophistication. The score, delicate and melancholic, stitches these images together with a restrained sensuality, turning the absence of physical contact into something almost tangible. The performances by Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Luàna Bajrami, and Aurélie Boquien are essential to this effect, anchoring the film with minimalist acting filled with internal tension and repressed desire. In the end, “Two People Exchanging Saliva” stands as a competent and thought-provoking short, guided by a direction that knows how to build atmosphere and spark reflection. Even as it stumbles over some narrative inconsistencies, the film succeeds in using its absurdity as a mirror for our own contradictions, exposing how deeply human relationships can be shaped by fear, power, and emotional deprivation. It’s a film that doesn’t offer all the answers, and maybe it shouldn’t, but it lingers precisely because it forces us to confront how desire and affection are still treated as risks in societies that like to see themselves as rational.

In the short film “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” the motto is “No kissing allowed.” It’s safe to say that a world where intimacy is punishable by death and where you pay with a slap to the face rather than money is very unusual. Combined with beautiful black-and-white cinematography, the result is a piece of art unlike anything you’ve probably ever seen before. The story efficiently combines themes such as lust and oppression but also overarching political concepts such as life in a surveillance state. Ultimately, thanks to its creative energy, it is a film experiment that worked perfectly for me and one that I can strongly recommend.

I'm all for moving to a slap based economy. 2025 (98th) Academy Award nominations: Best Live Action Short Film

Hmmm.... This was fun. I love French first off and it was a nice love story. I don't understand the slapping so much, but that is okay.

Well that was absolutely heartbreaking. Damn.