One of the promotional images for the film “Two Exchange Saliva” is a black-and-white photograph of a woman in close-up with bruises on her face, a bloody nose, and eyes dull with ecstasy. What should we do with the feelings that this woman awakens in us: a reflexive reaction of grief, and then a more developed and therefore suppressed curiosity? What can cause so much harm? The film is a fable of intimacy and consumerism, set in a dystopian version of Paris where romantic touch, especially kissing, is forbidden and punishable by death. The citizen in you laughs heartily as this film, a tragicomedy, exposes the hypocrisy and irony of the repressed West. But the lover inside also hurts: directors Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata suspend us in a state of desire and longing, in a state of obstacle.
From 2021, luxury Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette is inviting filmmakers to use its interiors at night. Singh and Musteata, partners in both work and life, use a boutique aesthetic of rugged geometric glamor for their Buñuelian tale of bourgeois sadness. The film is told in chapters. The first is called “Le Jeu” (“The Game”). The narrator, voiced by Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps, her voice not god-like but melancholic and playful, introduces us to Malaise (Luana Bajrami), a naive saleswoman with sparkling eyes that belies the meaning of her name. (Everyone in this grim world is named after a different state of bad humor.) Malese will soon be twenty-five years old. She is ill-fated, the narrator suggests. Malese spots a shopper, the beautiful Angina (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) – angina, in English, a reference to heart disease – soullessly wandering around the department store, and persuades another woman to play a game.
The seller and her buyer. A simple shopping trip hides instant attraction. The time comes to pay and we get a shock. Melese carefully puts on a bejeweled glove and slaps Anjina several times. The currency in a dark world that condemns intimacy as animalistic and grotesque (“two people exchanging saliva” is another way to describe kissing) is violence. To be bruised is to be among the upper echelons of society; Malez's colleagues outside of work feign status by drawing bruises. The cruelty of conformity, the exhaustion of romantic love, the denial of human eroticism and desire – these are the principles of the society that Singh and Musteata depict with mischievous humor, a society that must reek of vulgarity, given the ban on brushing teeth.
But it's a slap in the face. Punishment, payment, seduction – all at the same time. I could talk about the illusory power of the film, about its potential to reflect our sick society. But what interests me most about this unnerving work is the slaps. There is nothing cleaner in cinema than a face. The camera's love for the face is the original work of the medium. The slap thus causes visual distortion and spiritual betrayal—the camera rebels against its love object. “Two People Exchange Saliva” rewrites the slap to make it sound like a kiss. Anjina returns desperately to the store again and again to get Malaise's cure, her face red with blood just beneath the surface, the canvas of her awakened desire. She sleepwalked through her noble married life with a silent husband named Chagrin, who makes coffins for all those unfortunate souls who could not live without a kiss.
