Alice Lowe’s Timestalker takes us on a journey through time for a reincarnation rom-com about a woman falling for the wrong guy.
Director: Alice Lowe
Genre: Rom-Com, Fantasy, Drama
Run Time: 90′
UK Release: October 11, 2024
US Release: TBA
Where to Watch Timestalkers: in UK & Irish cinemas
It seems that Alice Lowe is not one for convention. The British comic actress – perhaps best known for Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (which she co-wrote) – made her directorial debut in 2016 with Prevenge. It was a barmy idea, a pregnancy horror comedy where an expectant mother becomes a serial killer dictated by the thoughts of her unborn child.
Now Lowe returns with Timestalker, an all-encompassing and time-bending film described as a ‘reincarnation rom-com.’ Although the ‘rom’ part is very much in question, with Lowe playing a woman who keeps falling for the wrong guy and losing her head to love (literally).
The first time this happens, Agnes (Lowe) is a peasant in Jacobean Scotland. She attends the execution of heretic preacher Alex (Aneurin Barnard, Dunkirk) but is bewitched by him. She tries to rescue him from execution, only to trip on her dog George and impale her head on an axe. Then, we travel to England in 1793. Agnes is now a Georgian duchess who has everything she could ever want. Except she is longing for something – or someone. Sure enough, she meets Alex (now a highwayman seeking fame) and decides it is fate for them to be together.
Yet as she stares at herself in the mirror, Agnes realises something. “I have been here before,” she says, “and I will be again.” And she will as a Victorian schoolteacher, a woman in 1980 New York and even Cleopatra (sort of). Each time, she falls in love with Alex, dies brutally and then gets reincarnated to start the cycle once again. Along the way, she encounters a range of familiar faces. There’s her lumbering, animalistic brute of a husband/stalker George (Nick Frost, Hot Fuzz), her friend Meg (Tanya Reynolds, Sex Education) and the mysterious Scipio (Jacob Anderson, Interview with the Vampire), who knows a great deal about Agnes’ predicament.
Lowe has added so many elements to this already daring concept, from highwaymen and ‘80s aerobics to New Romantics, post-apocalyptic dance numbers and references to John Lennon’s assassination. It is very ambitious considering its low budget, with Lowe’s craft team capturing the different periods extremely well and the brisk editing from Chris Dickens (Rocketman) and Peter Strickland’s regular editor Mátyás Fekete zig-zagging between them.
Lowe has mentioned being inspired by everything from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to Desperately Seeking Susan. You can also see parts of Sally Potter’s Orlando, Barry Lyndon, Working Girl and Derek Jarman’s Jubilee scattered throughout. However, for all its classic influences, two recent films spring to mind whilst watching Lowe’s sophomore project. They are the two adaptations of Henry James’ novella The Beast in the Jungle by Bertrand Bonello and Patric Chiha. They both skipped through the decades but also contained a large amount of yearning. Timestalker has that in spades, with a protagonist who hopelessly (perhaps naively) yearns for a man far from the romantic ideal.
Whilst Agnes is a fool for love, every version of Alex is uncaring and arrogant. And she fails to learn the lessons of her past lives, always destined to sacrifice herself for him. That doesn’t mean Agnes is always likeable. She can be blunt and dismissive, deriding Meg’s own unrequited infatuations. Plus, her belief that her fate is with Alex morphs into an unhealthy obsession by 1980 when he is an Adam Ant-style pop star, and she is a stalker (which fits the second part of the film’s title). However, Lowe’s funny and somewhat earnest performance means we still root for Agnes and her eventual self-discovery.
“We are all prisoners of our destiny,” says Meg at one point. In Timestalker, amidst the pursuit and pain of love, Agnes learns to control her destiny and find a sense of freedom. Not merely from George and Alex’s lack of love, but from her lack of self-love. It is a message of wholehearted romanticism that Lowe applies to the film’s dreamy soft focuses and a score by electronic duo Toydrum that pushes the emotion to the extreme. All that comes packaged in a successfully ambitious film that is simple at times, but also a funny and enjoyable journey through time and into the future, where hope and enlightenment are on offer.
Timestalker will be released in UK and Irish cinemas on October 11, 2024.
