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Alice Lowe’s deadpan absurdity finds a natural home in Timestalker, a comedy that attacks like a pinprick from a spinning wheel. It’s a cross-historical jaunt that lands somewhere between Sally Potter’s Orlando and Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen – Agnes (Alice Lowe), a Scottish peasant in 1688, attends the execution of the heretic Alex (Aneurin Barnard), only to fall madly in love. She tries to save his life. It does not end well. “I will find you,” she promises him, as a spittle of blood escapes her lips.
On to the next life. It’s 1793. Agnes is now a bewigged aristocrat, lying prostrate with her powder-pink cat, whining to her servant Meg (Tanya Reynolds) that, despite her fine set of teeth, library full of books, and financially endowed husband George (Nick Frost), there’s still a vacancy in her heart.
As the eras pass, from 1847 to 1980 to 2117, it becomes increasingly clear that Timestalker is not a story about an immortal love, but an incurable delusion. Alex, whether in the form of heretic, highwayman, or new romantic pop star, never seems to remember her, and never reciprocates that lightning strike of passion. It’s the same cycle, over and over, as Agnes laments: “She meets her soulmate, saves him, and then her head comes off!”
Lowe made her directorial debut with 2016’s Prevenge, a horror movie about an expectant mother who follows the murderous commands of her unborn. Between her two efforts, the writer-director-star has beautifully intertwined the kind of humour she’s built her reputation on – think TV’s Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, or Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (which she co-wrote) – with an emotional streak that’s deeply vulnerable and borderline existential.
If Prevenge questioned how much of a parent’s soul is owed to their child, then Timestalker puts love on trial, and asks what’s really at the heart of someone’s desperation to be seen and truly desired. Love means freedom, so why do we so often feel like we have to crawl through barbed wire to seek it out? Love means fulfilment, so why do we treat it like it’s simply another object to possess?
Agnes is always surrounded by new iterations of the same people – the sweet and faithful Meg (with her own story to tell), the bestial George, and Scipio, a seductively enigmatic figure played by the Interview with the Vampire actor Jacob Anderson – wherever Scipio is, he seems to know more than he should about Agnes’s plight, and whispers revolution in her ear. Anderson fits the part perfectly.
Lowe lets all these ideas brew in a frothy, funny, pastel-tinged concoction. The great Kate Dickie, in one scene, plays a therapist attempting to shake Agnes out of her reveries. “The dream is over. Help yourself to cookies,” she says. Rebecca Gore’s costumes offer a delicious array of corsets and power shoulders, and there’s a showstopper of a heart-shaped wig to be delicately balanced on Agnes’s 18th-century noggin. “Life isn’t a dress rehearsal,” she reminds us. Timestalker certainly puts on a show.
Dir: Alice Lowe. Starring: Alice Lowe, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost, Aneurin Barnard, Tanya Reynolds, Mike Wozniak, Kate Dickie, Dan Skinner. 15, 90 mins.
‘Timestalker’ is in cinemas from 11 October
