Cent Mille Milliards

What grants us satisfaction in our lives? To some, it may be the prospect of accruing a large, inconceivable amount of wealth. To others, purpose is derived from a sense of self-worth that can only come from doing something they truly love. Many people spend their lifetime in pursuit of a career that they wholeheartedly adore in an attempt to bridge the divide between capitalistic means and moralistic truths. In Virgil Vernier’s Cent Mille Milliards, Afine (Zakaria Bouti) is in the bardo—the Tibetan Buddhist liminal space between death and rebirth—straddled between monetary pursuit and a greater ambition in his life. Working as an escort, the 18-year-old is momentarily stuck in Monaco, with nowhere to go in the purgatory-esque timespan between Christmas and New Year’s. With only his Serbian friend Vesna (Mina Gajovic) to keep him company, he spends the last moments of his year around a precocious child named Julia (Victoire Kong) that Vesna babysits.

Though the film draws many parallels to works such as Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun thanks to its frank yet sensitive portrayal of adult-child dynamics, Vernier and his co-writer Benjamin Klintoe take a markedly different approach to its central relationship. Immediately, both Julia and Afine are drawn to one another for widely differing reasons: Julia is a despondent child who is attracted to Afine’s listlessness because it mirrors her own, while Afine finds Julia’s protected innocence charming because he misses his own youthful naiveté. The urge to freeze and reverse time is a thread which runs through Afine’s life, both literally when one of his escort friends discusses putting hot stones on her breasts to slow their growth and metaphorically as he contemplates his aging during the film. 

The film often bridges the gap between the literal and the abstract in its thematic messaging. Another idea it toys with, for instance, is that materiality is an illusory chase. Julia’s parents live in a gigantesque house and joyfully enjoy each other’s company there, whether they are playing video games or getting healed by Vesna’s crystals. But the house’s grandeur is a façade that masks a greater discontent for life than money can cover. As an old lady enters a lift with our protagonists, she remarks, “Be careful, children grow old fast here.” 

This textual brilliance is elevated by the distinctive tone editor Charlotte Cherici crafts. She expertly contrasts the film’s complicated interpersonal relationships with the vast emptiness of Monaco’s blinding lights. The city-state exists in two worlds, much like the constant state of limbo that presents itself to the characters. As the city undergoes construction, its identity crisis can be felt by the citizens residing in the land. Julia’s parents plan on building an island off the Monegasque coast, but as an elderly woman laments, “if they keep it up, everything will collapse.” The film captures the naturalistic sides of Monaco—the beaches, the plentiful bushes and trees that populate most of the French Riviera—but a skyscraper always lurks behind. It is a reminder of the contradictory nature of Monaco’s existence, one where an idyllic existence exists only for those who do not stay there. This is supplemented by cinematographer Jordane Chouzenoux’s arresting imagery, which constructs Monaco as an immuring city of lights. The film’s textured aesthetic evokes an era of yesteryear, but its anemoic imagery obfuscates a larger eeriness in its vacancy. There is an emphasis on architecture designed to engulf  and dominate rather than to house and comfort. The glitz and glamour of Monaco’s skyline almost swallows you whole, as the camera moves through the darkness with a strangely commanding energy. Yet the surface level beauty cracks due to the simple fact that there are no humans in sight. When you examine their condition, the paradise reveals itself to be a mirage.

Both Afine and Vesna are menial workers subsumed by the prospect of a better life, lured into Monaco’s position as a land of the ultra-wealthy. Though the characters operate in different fields, have contrasting motivations, and are in different stages in their lives, their end goal is the same: to be satisfied with their lives. Vesna calls her mother and assures her that all is well, that her “healing energy” business will take off with the capital gained from babysitting, a means by which the character attains agency. But while Afine does the sexual labour and is chastised for his lack of ambition, he still has the superficial attainment of status in mind as an end goal. Thankfully, though the film uses sex work as a means of contrasting opulence with superficial desires, it never berates its characters for going down the line of work and finds much to empathise with. Unlike her working-class companions, Julia has been gifted the luxuries of life; her despondency is instead motivated by a Nostradamus prospect of events, cataclysm predicated by her elite status and knowledge given to the upper class. The exchanges between the supremely rich and those merely getting by are not filled with clichéd idolisations but with a carnivorously brutal sense of despair. Ultimately, the film asks us what a life well-lived looks like. Those without wealth and the monetary power it presides over go to Sisyphean ends to make their dreams attainable, but those with power seem unable to shake away their lingering sense of dread that is attained through their wealth. Thus, in this life ripe with contradictions, expectations, and moral quandaries, what could ever make us truly happy?

9/10