'Two People Exchanging Saliva' Directors Exchange Their Perfect Guilty Pleasure Watches | Sorry Not Sorry

Following their Academy Award win for Best Live Action Short Film, Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh took a moment to talk to JustWatch about the films they enjoy revisiting. "I mean, I really love Dancer in the Dark," Musteata said. "For me, that film is such a beautiful melding of like a beautiful story, but also done in a very quirky, unique manner."

WATCH: Two People Exchanging Saliva Directors Exchange Their PERFECT Guilty Pleasure Watches!

Singh's pick leaned more toward classic European cinema. "There's a film by Federico Fellini that he made when he was a little bit older called Ginger and Fred, which I think is one of my favorite Fellini films." Both choices feel considered rather than casual, which makes sense given the short film success they're coming off of.

Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024) was shot in black and white. The film (which is streaming on Prime Video) is set in a dystopian world where kissing is punishable by death. It's a premise that sounds extreme, but the execution is far more controlled than sensational. There's very little excess in how the filmmakers built this world or how it's explained.

Instead, it relies on tone and pacing to establish a sense of unease. Intimacy, something usually framed as spontaneous and instinctive, is restricted and policed. That conflict between the personal and the imposed exists at the center of the story, along with how those rules reshape people's behavior. And a similar feeling can be seen in the films Musteata and Singh have chosen as their favorites.

Why These Picks Feel So Closely Linked To Their Own Film

There's a difference between liking a film and responding to the way it works. For Musteata and Singh, their picks point less to genre preferences and more to a shared interest in how emotion is constructed and presented. The psychological drama Dancer in the Dark doesn't separate emotion from form. It uses structure and stylization to intensify it.

The story, which follows factory worker Selma Ježková (Björk), who is going blind from a degenerative eye condition and wants to save her son from the same fate, seamlessly switches between harsh realism and whimsy without ever fully settling into one mode. The effect is disorienting, but deliberately so. The same thing shows up in Two People Exchanging Saliva.

The film doesn't exaggerate its world. Instead, every interaction feels measured, and every moment is slightly restrained. So when stolen intimacy does surface, it feels exposed rather than comforting. Singh's choice of 1986's Ginger and Fred approaches that idea from another angle. The story is about performance (literal and implied) and the way people present themselves to different audiences.

That perspective carries through into Two People Exchanging Saliva, where people change their behavior because they are constantly under surveillance. Along with being restricted, affection is transformed into a thing that has to be managed. What links these choices is a focus on how human connection changes under pressure. Whether that pressure comes from emotional extremity or social structure, the outcome is similar.

Why To Watch 'Dancer in the Dark' & 'Ginger and Fred' (And What To Watch After)

Dancer in the Dark is a film that asks a lot from its audience, structurally and emotionally. But it's totally worth it because of how uncompromising it is. It commits to a specific way of telling its story, even when that becomes uncomfortable to watch. If that sounds like something you'd be into, 1996's Breaking the Waves is a natural next step.

The story follows a very religious woman named Bess (Emily Watson). When her husband is paralyzed in a work accident, he asks Bess to have intimate encounters with other men and tell him about it. The request challenges her faith and institutional rigidness. Set in the early 1970s, the film is extremely stripped back and almost confrontational in how direct it is.

Ginger and Fred offers a more reflective storytelling experience, which is more observational and less immediate in terms of impact. The tone is reflective. But there's also a subtle unease running underneath it, particularly in how it frames nostalgia. If that resonates, The Great Beauty (2013) builds on a similar idea that examines aging and self-perception.

The story follows aging writer Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), who spends his time drifting through Rome's high society, where the parties are constant, and relationships feel increasingly hollow. After his birthday, everything that once felt effortless begins to feel repetitive, and the spaces he moves through (art, nightlife, conversation) start to lose their surface appeal.