Long Story Short wraps middle-age anxieties into time travel romantic comedy of redemption

In the time travel romantic comedy Long Story Short, time flies, but not when you’re having fun. For Teddy, a thirty-something Londoner relocated to Sydney and recently married, time flies when your life falls apart.

He’s the victim of a mysterious time travel curse, condemned to jump forward into his future, landing on his wedding anniversary every year to survey the mounting wreckage of his life.

A failing marriage, a suffocating career, jowly cheeks.

The anxieties of early middle age hit particularly hard in this second film from writer, director and actor Josh Lawson, a carpe diem fable that grapples with the impossibility of having it all, via a protagonist who can’t seem to realise he has to give up something to hold on to the ones…