''27 Missing Kisses'' ( ka, 27 დაკარგული კოცნა, ), also known as ''Summer''. is a 2000
Georgian film directed by
Nana Djordjadze that contains elements of
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
or
magical realism
Magical is the adjective for magic. It may also refer to:
* Magical (horse) (foaled 2015), Irish Thoroughbred racehorse
* "Magical" (song), released in 1985 by John Parr
* '' Magical: Disney's New Nighttime Spectacular of Magical Celebrations'', ...
. It was featured during the
Directors' Fortnight
The Directors' Fortnight (french: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) is an independent selection of the Cannes Film Festival. It was started in 1969 by the French Directors Guild after the events of May 1968 resulted in cancellation of the Cannes festiv ...
at the
2000 Cannes Film Festival
The 53rd Cannes Film Festival started on 14 May and ran until 25 May 2000. French film director, screenwriter, and producer Luc Besson was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the Danish film ''Dancer in the Dark'' by Lars von Trier.
The fe ...
. The film was also Georgia's submission to the
73rd Academy Awards for the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Production
Produced by Egoli Films (now Egoli Tossell Productions), along with British Screen Productions,
Canal+ , and others.
Filming took place from August–November, 1999 in
Georgia, Greece, and Los Angeles, California. Shots of the moon and a
solar eclipse
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six month ...
were filmed in Munich, Germany. The film also includes footage from the 1974
erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
French film
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French erotic films based on the main character in the novel ''Emmanuelle'' (1959), created by Emmanuelle Arsan.
Character history
Emmanuelle appeared as the pen name of Marayat Rollet-Andrian ...
.
Plot
Fourteen-year old Sybilla (
Nutsa Kukhianidze) comes to a small village in Georgia for a summer visit to her grandmother. (The specific year is not given in the film.) At the beginning, Mickey (Shalva Iashvili), a young teen, is heard in a
voice-over
Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non-Diegetic#Film sound and music, diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, th ...
, stating that Sybilla that summer had promised him 100 kisses, but that he only received 73 (leaving the 27 missing kisses of the title). The film's plot is episodic, with Sybilla running freely about the village and countryside, observing different people, and sometimes entering their homes uninvited. Although she is often accompanied by Mickey, who is close to her own age, she develops a strong crush on his 41-year-old father, Alexander (
Yevgeni Sidikhin), who is an astronomer.
During the course of her stay, Sybilla witnesses the relationships and infidelities of different characters, which become even more erotic after most of the town has attended a screening of the 1974 French erotic film
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French erotic films based on the main character in the novel ''Emmanuelle'' (1959), created by Emmanuelle Arsan.
Character history
Emmanuelle appeared as the pen name of Marayat Rollet-Andrian ...
. Mickey and Sybilla also see the film, hidden behind the theater screen. Some of the villagers' affairs are comic, especially an encounter between an engineer and another man's wife when his penis is stuck in a
ball-bearing ring. Other affairs have even less pleasant outcomes.
Sybilla becomes friends with a French ship's captain (
Pierre Richard), who has towed his ship to the outskirts of the village looking for his "lost sea." Sybilla also spies on and sometimes surreptitiously interferes with Alexander's seductions of other women, but she goes too far when she sneaks into his bed at night, asking Alexander to marry her and promising that she will be a better wife than any of the other women. Alexander, startled out of his sleep, immediately orders her to leave, but when Mickey sees Sybilla and his father, both half-naked, outside the house, he assumes that they have consummated an affair and grabs his father's rifle. As Sybilla runs away, she hears a shot and joins the captain on his ship, which he is towing toward a river. As the ship enters the river and finally reaches open water, Mickey's voice-over repeats, stating that he received only 73 of the promised kisses.
Awards
*2000 Phedon Papamichael won the ''Prix Vision'' at the
Avignon Film Festival
*2000 Nana Dzhordzhadze won the ''Prix Tournage'' at the
Avignon Film Festival,
*2000 Nana Dzhordzhadze won the ''Golden Aphrodite'' at the
Love is Folly International Film Festival, Bulgaria
*2001 Nana Dzhordzhadze won the ''Special Prize of the Jury'' at the
Brussels European Film Festival
Reception
The film did not receive widespread distribution in the United States, and the few English-language reviews tended to be negative, citing the episodic nature of the plot, what seemed to be confusing fantasy elements, unclear cultural references in the film, and lack of clear character motivation.
Todd McCarthy, reviewing the film for
''Variety'', complained about "the cloying, overdone sense of whimsy that dominates the picture." Although he praised Kuchanidze's portrayal of Sybilla as a character who "has a confidence and physical assertiveness well beyond her years," he still found her actions "tiresome after a while" and that the director and her screenwriter husband "allow their film to be defined by the randomness of the “crazy” episodes rather than exercising discipline over them to bring cohesion and meaning to the picture."
See also
*
Cinema of Georgia
The cinema of Georgia has been noted for its cinematography in Europe. Italian film director Federico Fellini was an admirer of the Georgian film: "Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, ...
*
References
External links
*{{IMDb title, id=0246405, title=27 Missing Kisses
2000 films
2000 comedy films
Films directed by Nana Jorjadze
Films shot in Greece
2000s Georgian-language films
Films scored by Goran Bregović
Comedy films from Georgia (country)
Multilingual films from Georgia (country)