The story follows Sybilla (played with astonishing naturalism by Nutsa Kukhianidze), a wild, precocious teenager sent from the bustling chaos of Tbilisi to spend the summer with a quiet, eccentric family in a sleepy village. She is not a passive guest. From the moment she arrives, Sybilla declares war on boredom. She climbs roofs, fires a slingshot, and reads erotic novels under the covers.
The film takes place during the "Summer of the Eclipse," a cosmic backdrop that mirrors the unpredictable, eclipse-like darkening of logic that comes with intense infatuation. The Dzhordzhadze Touch: Visual Storytelling Nana Dzhordzhadze - 27 Missing Kisses -2000-
However, over two decades later, the film has aged remarkably well. In an era of #MeToo and intense scrutiny of age-gap narratives, one might expect the Sybille-Alexander dynamic to be condemned. Yet Dzhordzhadze navigates this minefield with subversive intelligence. The film never endorses the relationship; it shows Alexander as a weak, pathetic figure. The true hero is Sybille’s unapologetic agency. She decides. She acts. She burns. She climbs roofs, fires a slingshot, and reads
The film’s tone is unique: it is a comedy of absurd gestures (a stolen pig, a runaway telescope, a village screening of Emmanuelle that goes hilariously wrong) wrapped around a tragedy of unreciprocated love. Sybilla is both the agent of chaos and its ultimate victim. She is too young to understand the consequences of her desires, but old enough to feel their sting. In an era of #MeToo and intense scrutiny
The Whimsical Awakening of 27 Missing Kisses If you’re looking for a film that feels like a fever dream of late summer, Georgian director Nana Dzhordzhadze’s 27 Missing Kisses
Sybille immediately fixates on Alexander (Yevgeni Sidikhin), a middle-aged, melancholic astronomer in his 40s. She declares her love for him with a directness that is both innocent and terrifying. He rebuffs her, not out of cruelty, but out of societal constraint and his own unresolved longings. Meanwhile, the village buzzes with its own low-stakes dramas: a lost cow, a stolen boat, a fading communist-era statue, and the ubiquitous presence of the town’s other young boys—including Mickey (Shalva Iashvili), a shy boy hopelessly in love with Sybille.
For contemporary audiences discovering on streaming platforms or restored Blu-ray, the film offers a refreshing antidote to sanitized teen dramas. It understands that puberty is not a polite montage but a riot of hormones, humiliation, and glorious selfishness.