By: Kat Guevara, Contributing Writer
Virgil Vernier’s latest film, Cent Mille Milliards (100,000,000,000,000), opens with a provocative tableau: a co-ed group of escorts in Monaco candidly exchanging their most surreal and unsettling experiences on the job. From its first moments, the film establishes a hyperreal aesthetic that feels like a cinematic collision between the unfiltered gaze of Nan Goldin and the gritty social realism of Sean Baker. Premiering on the West Coast at Now Instant and 2220 Arts + Archives venues during the LA Festival of Movies, held April 3–6, Vernier’s work dives headfirst into the margins of glamour and vulnerability.
Afine (Zakaria Bouti), lost in a sea of existential uncertainty, reaches out to his Serbian friend, Vesna (Mina Gajovic), who works as an au pair to fund her dreams. She cares for Julia (Victoire Kong), the young heir to a luxury island development, highlighting the stark divide between aspiration and reality.
Stranded in the seemingly peaceful bubble of Monaco, Afine grows increasingly isolated. The wealth disparity between him and his surroundings is palpable, as his beauty is commodified, compounded by the concerns of those around him about his lack of direction. A prophetic warning from an elderly woman about Julia’s pure and exotic beauty mirrors Afine’s own sense of demise.
The film delves into unspoken truths, where structures of our neoliberal society are alluded to but never fully revealed, conveyed through fragmented texts, subtle glances and undisplayed intimate moments. It serves as a slow-cinema meditation on a post-reality world, where the young are doomed to wander aimlessly in a society offering no meaningful path forward. The mood is one of quiet resignation, where the future feels uncertain and isolation is palpable. Yet, a single, touching moment has the potential to shift everything, reflecting those in society waiting to be saved.
Vernier, who debuted with Karine at the San Sebastián Festival in 2001, has since directed eight feature films, with Cent Mille Milliards as his latest work.
