Sex and love don’t always make for ideal bedmates, and the strain one places on the other is at the heart of Swiss writer-director Jan Gassmann’s latest feature, 99 Moons. Provocative but also thought-provoking, this story of a couple that meets through a Tinder-like hookup app and falls into a long-term relationship is backed by fearless turns from Valentina Di Pace and Dominik Fellmann, two non-actors willing to go the distance in a film that trails their characters over the many moons of its title.
Shot on a small budget, with a documentary-like approach reminiscent of Gassmann’s earlier work — including his 2007 Berlin prizewinner, Chrigu — this Cannes Acid premiere is not necessarily the most original romance on the planet, but its raw approach to contemporary questions of intimacy and commitment is well worth a look. More festivals, and perhaps a small-scale release, are on the horizon.
In the film’s racy opening sequence, Bigna (Di Pace), an ambitious young scientist specializing in tsunamis, is attacked by a masked man in a empty parking garage, only to wind up quite literally sitting on his face in what turns out to be a crude game of erotic role-playing. The assailant is Frank (Fellmann), a seductive party boy who, like Bigna, is more interested in random anonymous trysts than in anything serious.
And yet an attraction gradually develops between the two opposites, with Bigna showing up at the clandestine club where Frank bartends and also lives, searching for a connection that may be more than sexual after all. They keep on hooking up — in the basement, the kitchen, the car — but soon it’s about more than just the nookie. At least that seems to be the case with Bigna, who forgoes an important research trip to Chile in order to shack up with Frank and start what may be, gulp, a real relationship.
Gassmann has a good feel for the carefree yet desultory lives that the two initially lead, with drugs and booze fueling their desires much more than anything sentimental. The Zurich-based bar where Frank works, captured in Gaspar Noé-esque red light by DP Yunus Roy Imer (System Crasher), features a dance floor of partygoers bopping around wearing wireless headphones — a system clearly meant to avoid noise complaints from the neighbors, but that also underlines how people in the same room can be connected through technology instead of through sheer physical proximity.
When Frank and Bigna take the plunge and become something like an actual couple, that’s also where the troubles begin. Frank, who at first fled commitment like it were an STD, seems to enjoy the taste he gets of a more settled-down life, transforming from a punkish playboy into a concerned and hardworking homebody. Bigna, meanwhile, has more and more misgivings about her decision to forego a promising career path for love, and she eventually winds up reconnecting with her thesis advisor, George (Danny Exnar).
This kind of push-and-pull between the professional and personal, between passions and emotions, is nothing entirely new, but Gassmann manages to give his film a fresh and somewhat fleeting feel. Rather than watching a pair of manufactured movie characters, it’s as if we were viewing snapshots of lives that come across as both real and vaguely familiar.
The performances by the two leads add to that tangible sensation, with Di Pace — a Sicilian artist based in Zurich — especially convincing as a woman unable to reconcile her wants and needs, and unable to make any compromises, as she grows older. 99 Moons doesn’t judge Bigna’s behavior, nor does it Frank’s, and by the end the couple seems to have gained as much as they’ve lost. The irony is that, for all the risky business they engage in early on, the true risk is making a choice and sticking with it.
Director, screenplay: Jan Gassmann
Cast: Valentina Di Pace, Dominik Fellmann, Danny Exnar, Jessica Huber, Leo Matteo Girolamo
Producers: Reto Schaerli, Lukas Hobi
Cinematography: Yunus Roy Imer
Production design: Mirjam Zimmermann
Editing: Miriam Maerk, Jacques L’Amour
Music: Michelle Gurevich
Production company: Zodiac Pictures (Switzerland)
World sales: M-Appeal
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Acid)
In German, English
110 minutes