The Last Dance
2017 · 7m · UK
Directed by Chris Keller
Genres: drama, romance, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In the not-too-distant future, a lonely elderly man named Hugo works obsessively on a mysterious machine that may let him relive a single cherished moment from his past. When a drone delivers a letter addressed to his late wife, he resolves to finally test his invention.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the big emotional beat when he activates the machine, but Keller refuses to give it to you—that restraint, that willingness to let the letter arrive and *not* answer it, is genuinely subversive for a premise this sentimental.
The film situates itself knowingly in the lineage of Kaufman and Gondry—intimate time-manipulation stories about loss—but grounds that genealogy in an almost Bresson-like compositional rigor that keeps sentimentality at arm's length.
The real masterstroke is how the sound design—that specific hum of the machine, the drone's arrival, the silence after—does more emotional work than the VFX ever could, letting a modest budget's worth of restraint outweigh Double Negative's horsepower.
Reviews
Achingly beautiful and heartbreaking, short film The Last Dance from filmmaker Chris Keller combines the time with the timeless to create one of the best short films of 2019 so far.
The Last Dance is a short so finely tuned and optimised, the result on the audience will be nothing but awe inspiring.
Festivals
- London Independent Film Awards 2018, Winner
- Cult Critic Movie Awards 2018, Winner
- Elgin Short Film Festival 2018, 2nd Place
- Dublin International Short and Music Festival 2018, Best Sound Design
- Oxford International Short Film Festival 2019, Best Special Effects
- Sci-Fi London Film Festival 2018
- LA Shorts International Film Festival 2018
- DC Shorts Film Festival 2018