Two decades later, 27 Missing Kisses feels eerily prescient. In an era of debate about age, consent, and the complexities of desire, the film offers no easy answers. It is not a cautionary tale, nor is it a romance. It is a portrait of a summer when a girl learned that kisses, like people, can vanish into thin air.
As Sybilla rides away from the village at dawn, her face is a mask of stone. She has not been defeated, but she has been changed. And somewhere in the distance, 27 kisses float away—unclaimed, unforgettable, and utterly missing. If you enjoy lyrical, bittersweet cinema in the vein of The Dreamlife of Angels or The Virgin Suicides , seek out Nana Dzhordzhadze’s 27 Missing Kisses . It is a small film with a giant, beating heart. Nana Dzhordzhadze - 27 Missing Kisses -2000-
But her primary obsession is a man three times her age: Alexander (Yevgeni Sidikhin), the brooding, handsome father of the boy next door. While Mikha (Shalva Iashvili), Alexander’s lovesick teenage son, watches her with puppy-dog devotion, Sybilla pursues the father with a relentless, unembarrassed passion. The film’s title refers to a promise: Alexander once told his wife that if he ever loved another, he would give her 100 kisses. Sybilla, counting every stolen moment, declares she will stop at 73—leaving 27 kisses missing, a space for possibility or ruin. Dzhordzhadze, a former documentarian, directs with the eye of a painter. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (who would go on to work with Alexander Payne) bathes every frame in honeyed light. Sunflowers droop lazily. A cow wanders into a living room. A motorcycle roars down a dirt road, kicking up dust that hangs in the air like smoke. The village is almost a character itself—an idyll that hides a cauldron of jealousy, repressed desire, and small-town judgment. Two decades later, 27 Missing Kisses feels eerily prescient