If you think dating is tough now, wait until you see the future as envisioned in the sci-fi short film Cupid’s Paradise.

Inspired by her own dating experiences in Los Angeles, writer-director Ivy Liao’s dazzling and compelling short film is set in a dystopian future in which every single adult has exactly 100 tries to find a love match.

If they fail… well, the consequences are not good.

Adding to this already untenable burden is the fact everyone is assigned a “hotness” score based on the most superficial criteria, such as physical attractiveness and social position. The greater your score, the more desirable you become, which almost guarantees your chances of finding your love match.

Those with lower scores are often forced to resort to very dubious means to inflate their rating in order to boost their chances of finding a match.

One such woman is Jenn (Andrea Martina). Jenn is looking for her match with no success - and her time is running out. She meets Kevin (Intae Kim) who expresses interest, but she dismisses him due to his score being lower than hers.

Desperate, Jenn tries various ways to artificially elevate her score to find a match and beat the clock before it is too late.

Cupid’s Paradise is a slyly subversive rumination on how technology is transforming dating in the 21st century. The short’s hyper-augmented, neon-hued reality perfectly exposes how technology meant to connect us - such as social media and mobile dating apps like Tinder, Grindr, OKCupid, and Tastebuds - often only exacerbates feelings of alienation, loneliness, and isolation.

The short also takes aim at the superficiality fostered by our living in an Instagram-ready world, where we tend to display carefully curated versions of ourselves online; it is a digital masquerade that threatens to sacrifice true vulnerability and authenticity in our connections with others.

Watch Cupid’s Paradise in its entirety here…

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