It remains to be seen whether this half-baked world-building will be enough for Hot Spot to be reappraised as a forgotten cult classic.

One could, at a push, argue for Hot Spot as a nihilistic forecast of a future in which artificial intelligence renders void all human conflict and contrast. If so, Smoczynska’s restless, vigorously witty imagination feels proudly unsuited to that vision.

Hot Spot is trying to say something but it loses interest in its own dystopia.

By the final stretch, Hot Spot has become almost as exhausting as the world it depicts.