There is a saying that can easily sum up what ‘Expiration Day’ wants to foreground: ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. ‘Expiration Day’ is about love in any form and shape, love that comes in all colors and all shapes, the love we all experience and sadly, at some point, we lost. The same love we find every day, even though we know that at some point it may disappear and hurt us, but even so, we still take the risk and dive blindfolded in a pool that may be empty and dry.

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Shwenn Shunya Chang’s short is interesting for two reasons: first of all it combines 2D and 3D techniques, making it more interesting and all in all a delight for animation connoisseurs, the ones that are very keen on impeccable techniques. Second of all, it is the narrative description of a love poem that seems to be an ode of love, in the same manner Allen Ginsberg was doing some years ago, rooting for love in any way and shape possible. This poem has the advantage of being illustrated at the same time as it is narrated, giving the viewers that special aid sometimes the mind cannot provide.

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Each love story has an expiration date, a date one cannot know beforehand. When creating love stories or love related films, it is easy to hit the cliché bottom, and most of the movie directors of both fiction and animation works are nowadays going that way. Shwenn Shunya Chang, on the other hand, understood how things work and took another path in telling a profound, yet simple story; his approach is more than interesting – his short tackles the same old love story recipe, but in a new and different manner that made us feel it as being something fresh and relatable.

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Written by Vlad A. G