Shorts: ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’ Crescendos with Shopgirls, Slaps, and an Absurdist, Devastating Heart

A radio commercial for the lottery promises an usual prize in Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s surreal, and ravishingly shot film, Two People Exchanging Saliva. “Win a million slap credit today!” the excited voice says. In this new reality, people do not pay with cash or even credit cards but with slaps to the face. That’s one way to curb unnecessary spending. In this world, smacks are currency and passion is punishable by death. Two People also promises, though, that love will never dimish, and Musteata and Singh’s film is like a jolt of pure absurdist adrenaline.

Malaise is about to turn 25, and she begins a new job as a shopgirl that caters to an uppercrust clientele. When her boss, the uptight Petulante, is too busy to take care of one of her most profitable clients, Angine, Malaise steps in to serve her. They are curious about one another, and Malaise even tries to have Angine participate in a game where they pretend they’ve known each other for years. Angine, who is unhappy at home, is disarmed by the young shopgirl, and she finds herself returning to the store to overhaul her wardrobe. With every slap happy, lovelorn payment, Petulante becomes increasingly jealous.

If you are caught kissing, you are carted away in a taped up cardboard box. We hear inhabitants kicking and screaming as they might try to open their new taped up coffin, but it’s no use. How close does passion live to fear? We have seen affairs take its lovers’ breath away, but the seemingly innocuous act of kissing is enough of an offense that it has everyone on edge. Every employee has to breath into a security guard’s face to ensure that their breath is foul enough to ward off any temptations. Remember at the height of the pandemic when you had to get your temperature check before entering a theater or going into work? Try garlic gum or a steady diet of onions before you decide to complain about that!

Tapping into our desires is primal and necessary to live a healthy balanced life, and Musteata and Singh’s film proposes an obscenely funny but aburdly scary world where we cannot even begin to explore our pulses racing. Sumptuously shot in black-and-white and grounded by lovely performnces, Two People Exchanging Saliva confronts each of us with a devastating reality. What if the powers at be can remove how we love?

Two People Exchanging Saliva will play part of the Short Film: After Dark program on October 25 at the AFI Film Festival.