The Infinite Man

It's been a year, making it Dean and Lana's anniversary. He has a schedule of events, a plan, with no room for deviation. He has a device, an "external limbic system", to record a memory of this perfect day. He has come to a motel that is closed.

Things don't unfold according to plan. Lana leaves, not with Dean, but with Terry. Dean stays, distraught. Dean builds a machine to recover what there was of that perfect day, to revisit that moment.

Literally, it would seem. It's been a year, making it Dean and Dean and Lana's anniversary. He has a schedule of events, a plan, with some room for deviation. He has a device, an "external limbic system", intended to record a memory of this perfect day. He has come to a motel that is still closed. Things don't unfold according to plan. Lana leaves, not with Dean, but with Terry. Dean stays distraught.

Dean has built a machine to recover what there was of that perfect day, to revisit that moment. It's been a year, making it Dean and Dean and Dean and Lana's anniversary. Things don't unfold according to plan.

With music from Zoe Barry and Jed Palmer, efficient production design, this is Hugh Sullivan's first feature. He writes, directs, and has assembled a beautiful piece of clockwork film-making, full of parts that rotate to change meaning. As in The Conversation, each time we hear the couple speak we learn a little more. With absurdity, subtlety, complexity borne of a couple of simple rules well explained, The Infinite Man is a more than satisfying addition to the canon of time travelling romantic comedy.

For romance this is, as Josh McConville's Dean and Hannah Marshall's Lana and Alex Dimitriades' Terry play their parts in a love triangle that becomes a tetrahedron that becomes a hypertetrahedron that becomes, well, complicated.

Things don't unfold according to plan. Or rather, the plan does not unfold according to things - Dean learns a little more, each time, until he realises the extent of the loop, and who is trapped within it. The film itself recognises this danger, and unfolds things according to plan. Like Coherence, The Infinite Man is a human drama with a human solution, here with time travel rather than parallel realities. Yet both share a focus on the observer, the observed - for each time Dean discovers that it's "this time last year" he has a schedule of events, a plan, with more room for deviation. They also share a strong recommendation - you should find room for The Infinite Man within your schedule of events. It's Dean and Dean and Dean and Dean and Lana and Lana and Terry and Terry's anniversary, but Hugh Sullivan has a device, a film, to create a memory of this perfect day. He has built a machine to allow you to revisit that moment, but first you must see it.