Grief, a fake medium and a dealer with a plan: Pierre Salvadori's The Electric Kiss is a 2026 French-Belgian comedy in which a widowed artist's search for his late wife turns into an elaborate performance that nobody involved can quite bring themselves to stop.
What is The Electric Kiss about?
Antoine used to make art. Since his wife Irène died, a loss he holds himself responsible for, he has produced little besides excuses, and drink has filled the space where the work used to be. Desperate for some contact with her, he visits Suzanne, a sideshow performer who tells fortunes she does not believe in and lives from one unpaid debt to the next. Suzanne has no gift, but she has an audience, and in Antoine she recognises a man who wants to be convinced. Armand, the dealer who depends on Antoine staying functional, notices the effect of these visits and makes Suzanne an offer: keep the act going, keep Antoine upright, and the debts disappear. So Suzanne improvises. Session after session, she stages hypnosis routines in which Irène supposedly speaks through her, inventing as she goes while Antoine clings to every word. The humour lives in the gap between the solemnity of mourning and the mechanics of a con that has to be rebuilt each time it threatens to collapse.
About the cast
Pio Marmaï and Anaïs Demoustier head the cast, with Gilles Lellouche, Vimala Pons and Gustave Kervern alongside them, and Patrice Tépasso, Madeleine Baudot and Charline Cerri completing the ensemble. Pierre Salvadori directs, and at a little over two hours the film gives its central characters room for the extended improvised sessions that carry the story.
Context & significance
The original French title is La Vénus électrique, literally The Electric Venus; the international name, The Electric Kiss, moves the emphasis from the fairground figure to the charge between the characters. It is a France–Belgium co-production released in 2026, and it works squarely in the comedy register even though its starting point is a death and a man who cannot forgive himself. The set-up draws on a long line of stories about mediums and the people who need them: the willing dupe, the reluctant fraud, and the third party with money riding on the outcome. Here it is played as a chamber comedy rather than a thriller. Running one hundred and twenty-three minutes, it belongs to the strand of French comedy that lets sadness and farce share a room.
Watching The Electric Kiss on Ktime
The Electric Kiss streams on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles; pick the Farsi voice track or stay with the original French audio and read along. A K-Time account login is needed to watch, while the page itself is free, and the fully Farsi interface is built for Persian speakers outside Iran.