Comedy science fiction takes many forms. Thoughtful (if strange) scifi, like Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension sits right there alongside the more intellectually down-market (but no less enjoyable) Teenagers from Outer Space. That comedy can exist across that spectrum isn’t shocking, but it’s surprising when something lives on both those lines at the same time.
And Fireflies in the Dusk has entered the chat.
The story is actually fairly simple: a 19th century woman, Charlotte, has discovered that her desk has a temporal connection to a credenza in an ad agency office in 2025. Through letters exchanged via this unusual method, she has met her man Zack, technically a DudeBro, and she’s in love from the letters he’s been sending through the cabinet to her. When she is about to be forced to marry Cecil, a right-proper English gentleman, she chooses to go through the desk and be with her true love in 2025.
And, of course, Cecil follows.
The situation arises where Charlotte and Zack become a 21st century couple. Cecil and Zach’s boss, Martin, also come together in a lovely sort of twist where Cecil discovers everything from GRINDR to Showgirls.
Of course, things go about in a strange and weird way, and the ending is a wonderful, twisted, utterly appropriate comedic finish.
The first thing is that everyone simply accepts the idea of a credenza that is a time portal, and that passing between the time periods. It’s an absolutely bizarre possibility, but everyone’s basically just ‘yeah, whatever’ about it. That is what I love about science fiction comedy, when the unexpected becomes the completely blasse. That’s a key to genre acting, to be able to playoff the strange and interact with a new reality in a natural way. Everyone in Fireflies in the Dusk manages that, with special note going to Emily Goss, whose work I’ve admired since I first saw her in a lovely horror film The House on Pine Street. She’s hilarious presenting a Charlotte that is utterly of her time, but finds herself setting into her new time period slightly uneasily. Her role at the end, which is a delightful twist in tone. She provides the backbone of the story.
But it’s Hale Appleman (probably best known for his role in The Magicians) as Cecil who absolutely kills every second on screen. He’s deadpan, but he delivers even lines like “Have you heard of poppers?” with nothing more than a late Victornian Gentleman’s droll. He’s great, and his boyfriend played with absolute dead-on comedic energy by Drew Droege (of Drunk History and Chloë Sevigny imitation YouTube videos) gives the flip-side to the Zack-Charlotte relationship.
It’s a perfect little seventeen minute experience that could be chock-full of fascinating ideas. If time travel is possible through household goods, exactly how many people take the journey? Is it a manufacturing glitch, or a planned feature? Are there repercussions? What exactly is the mechanic that makes it possible?
Now, these questions exist, but that’s where the trick happens: we’re not here to have a meaningful thoughts about time travel; we’re here to see what these two fish out of timestream’s water do when tossed into the present. It’s a relationship comedy, mixed with an office comedy, all set inside a time-travel story. That takes doing, and in such a short timeframe it’s a near miracle.
It’s a short with such good acting (including a lovely couple of pop-ups by the wonderful Amy Yasbeck) and smart writing, which makes the fact that the biggest laughs at points are not exactly higher-than-middlebrow. The best of these, and they are pointedly funny, are delivered by the excellent Jade Catta-Pretta. She doesn’t have a huge role, but it’s remarkable.
So, this is one of those wonderful shorts that doesn’t only live in one world, both within and without the story of the story, which is the story itself. It’s not as meta as that makes it sound, but it’s so much fun getting there, you wouldn’t mind even if it was. There are smart references to classics like Somewhere in Time (and the poster is a direct reference to it) and The Lake House, but it still feels fresh because, well, it's not super-serious about things. Can't argue with that direction if you've got a cast with the comedic chops to pull it off.
You can find Fireflies in the Dusk on the festival circuit, and it’ll be playing Cinequest in March. You can view a trailer here .
