Some Time Later

Some Time Later (Tiempo después, 2018) is an absurdist sci-fi comedy from José Luis Cuerda, ready to watch online on iFILM. The year is 9177 and humanity has dwindled to almost nothing. The whole world has shrunk to two classes: a king and his oligarchs inside the gleaming Representative Building, and the destitute crowd packed into the slums clinging to its base.

It all tips over because of something tiny. An unemployed man called José María decides to sell homemade lemonade at the building's entrance, and that nothing-of-a-decision knocks one gear into the next until the whole fragile hierarchy starts to wobble. Cuerda packs the frame with deadpan gags and ridiculous bit players — Roberto Álamo, Blanca Suárez and Antonio de la Torre among a roster of Spanish comics delivering nonsense with stone-cold straight faces.

This was Cuerda's final film, the work of a master of Spanish surrealism who also gave us Butterfly's Tongue. The humor is bone-dry, the political satire is blunt, and the logic is twisted inside out on purpose. Not for everyone: you either lock onto its wavelength in the first minute or you don't. Made for fans of strange, lumpy comedy in the Monty Python vein. Stream Some Time Later (2018) online on iFILM.