In Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s Two People Exchanging Saliva, two women meet in a world where payment is exchanged by slaps to the face and kissing is among the most forbidden of all actions, and they begin to develop an intimate relationship that’s doomed from the start.
Awards Buzz spoke with Musteata and Singh about how this project originated from the availability of the specific shooting space:
“It’s an unusual one. I do think there’s something to be said about how sometimes restrictions allow for creativity, and in this situation, yeah, we were approached by some producers in Paris who we work with and love and they asked us if we had any ideas set in a luxury department store. Aside from the fact that they’re very beautiful, expansive, interesting places, they’re very loaded in terms of ideas of beauty and power and wealth. We started developing ideas, and at a certain point, Alex just had this lightbulb moment that felt surreal, where he suggested a film set in a world where people pay for things by being slapped in the face. Everyone started giggling nervously. But immediately, Alex and I are just always on the same wavelength, and I was like, there’s something there. Our producers, to their credit, were not like, that’s too scary, don’t go there. They were like, why don’t you explore that, and come back to us with a script? So we spent the next few weeks – it was one of the fastest things we ever wrote – we wrote several different versions. Natalie had this idea that maybe as a yin to the yang of this idea of slapping that, in this world where there’s a casual violence that people are used to, that intimacy should be absent. What if kissing was forbidden? And especially since we knew the story would take place in a department store, it’s a very feminine space, it made sense that maybe it would be a story about love or forbidden love.”
Watch the video above to hear about what else went into the development of this story and the casting of the roles, and watch the full short film below via The New Yorker!
