Taiwan
is a democracy with the world’s fifteenth largest economy, but the UN and
global diplomatic community wants to pretend it doesn’t exist. When nuclear
disaster ravages the Other China, they just carry on ignoring, like business as
usual. Radiation and isolation make things pretty dystopian, pretty quickly for
the survivors, but life maybe has a way of hanging on in Henry Tsai Tsung-han’s
short film Love After Time, which screens as part of the Anarchy shorts block at
this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.
There
is a new policy: only survivors with a clean health certificate are now
eligible for emergency food relief. That does not sit well with the mystery
woman. She sparks a riot and then shrewdly uses as a distraction to steal food.
That doesn’t sit well with the officer overseeing the distribution. However,
when he corners the thief in her makeshift shelter, he finds she has his
number, in multiple ways. She happens to be surprisingly confident and
seductive. She also realizes he is a mutant, just like her.
LAT might have the
most bizarre sex scene you will see in Park City. Some survivors start growing
organs in nontraditional places, if you get the picture. Eventually, we learn
even the circumstances of reproduction have been affected. In some ways, LAT covers similar ground as Antonio
Pandovan’s short film Eveless, but it
has a more humanistic perspective. In fact, Tsai passes up many opportunities
to gawk at the mutated deformities, preferring to focus on the evolving ways
humans relate to each other—and whether such a term still applies to mutant
survivors.
Nana
Lee Chien-na also must be the spriteliest wasteland waif you will see in a month
of apocalypses, but there is no denying her charisma. The Taiwanese pop idol-actress
is an unusually big-name celebrity for a scruffy nuclear Armageddon short film,
but good for her. Her courtship with Lee Hong-chi’s Army Officer is definitely
intense and he looks pretty darned freaked and conflicted during the aftermath.
LAT directly addresses
the question what does it mean to be human, which is a big theme for any film,
of any length. Tsai creates a convincingly grubby dystopia that is worlds
removed from his previous teen TV work. Highly recommended, Love After Time screens again tomorrow
(1/22), along with Philippe McKie’s very cool Breaker, as part of the Anarchy shorts package at the 2018
Slamdance Film Festival.