Could a quirky black and white French short film about a dystopian world where kissing is outlawed win an Academy Award?
It seems it could do, with directors Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh scooping up awards left, right and centre including at film festivals in San Francisco, the American Film Institute and Clermont Ferrand.
The winner of the Cesar for Best Live Action Short, it stars Luana Bajrami as Malaise, a shop assistant in a luxury fashion store.
In a society where goods are exchanged not for money but slaps across the face, Malaise finds a customer, Zar Amir Ebrahimi's Angine who keeps coming back to her and who she develops an attraction to.
As Malaise delivers blows across Angine's face, her colleague Aurelie Boquien's Petulante bristles with envy as Angine was once a valued customer.
Because kissing is outlawed, people live in fear as young women are seized off the streets by guards and are placed kicking and screaming into taped up, coffin like boxes.
Carted away in vans, these unfortunate people are tossed over clifftops to their death.
In order to avoid this fate, citizens are encouraged to eat garlic chewing gum to ward off temptation.
Every day Malaise, Petulante and their fellow workers are also subjected to a breath test by store security before being admitted inside.
However with Angine and Malaise developing a mutual attraction, can they resist the temptation to risk everything by kissing?
Filmed in striking black and white by cinematographer Alexandra de Saint Blanquat and narrated by the Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps, Musteata and Singh's short is undoubtedly one of the most stylish films featuring on any Academy Awards shortlist this year.
Credit must go to Anna Brun's slick production design, Rezvan Farsijani's sharp costumes and Marcos Barajas' make up work.
Viewers will be reminded watching it of the provocative cinema of the Spanish Mexican filmmaker Luis Bunuel, with hints in there too of the highly stylised work of Wes Anderson.
But like both Anderson and Bunuel, Musteata and Singh's short will sharply divide audiences .
Some will be beguiled by its quirkiness.
Others will find it a bit pretentious.
While there is a lot to admire about it technically, it's a short that is very hard to warm to and it'll be interesting to see if that is its undoing among Oscar voters who have tended to like charming shorts.
If it does capture the Live Action Short Oscar, though, it'll be a big departure for Academy voters to plump for a hard nosed short not in the English language.
However maybe that's the kind of jolt short filmmaking needs.
('Two People Exchanging Saliva received its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2024)
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