‘Timestalker’: SXSW Review

Dir/scr: Alice Lowe. UK. 2024. 89mins

Eight years after she successfully put her offbeat spin on pregnancy and motherhood in serial killer comedy Prevenge, writer/director/star Alice Lowe returns to do the same with matters of the heart. While its title may sound like a 1980s action sci-fi — and there is a good deal of that vibe here — Timestalker is actually a darkly funny, emotionally insightful time-travel comedy drama about a woman determinedly pursuing the supposed love of her life throughout history. 

Decisively overturns traditional romcom messaging

Taking pleasure in subverting romcom tropes and boasting a satisfying attention to detail, Timestalker is a showcase for Lowe’s considerable talents on both sides of the camera. While these have previously been on display in the likes of Prevenge (which premiered at Venice in 2016 and was also produced by Western Edge Pictures) and Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (in which she starred and co-wrote), Timestalker offers Lowe a broad canvas on which to blend comedy, horror and period pastiche. Seemingly undiluted by its six-year gestation (due, in part, to Covid-19), it’s a heady mix, riffing on everything from folk horror to Groundhog Day, Working Girl to Powell and Pressburger, and should appeal to further festivals and distributors, particularly those with a genre bent, after its SXSW premiere.

In 1688, in the inhospitable wilds of Scotland, spinster peasant Agnes (Lowe) attends the public execution of devilishly handsome heretic preacher Alex (a game, foppish Aneurin Barnard) — and instantly falls in love with him. It’s an infatuation that lasts until death; hers, about a minute later, after she trips over her pet dog George and accidentally impales herself on a poleaxe. 

This brisk, funny sequence sets the tone and begins a centuries-long cycle of lovelorn pursuit for Agnes, who is reincarnated at various points in history and always convinced that she is fated to be with Alex (also reincarnated in various guises). Alex, however, does not share Agnes’s conviction that they are soul mates, and proves himself to be something of an untrustworthy coward. Despite this, and warnings from her loyal friend Meg (Tanya Reynolds) and enigmatic, cosmically-aware Scipio (Game Of Thrones star Jacob Anderson) — both of whom always turn up alongside her — Agnes keeps attempting romantic assignations with Alex. And they always end in her death.

This expansive set-up gives Lowe scope to have fun with writing, performance and, working with production designer Felicity Hickson, visual style. She crafts a series of perfectly formed vignettes, all with meticulous attention to period detail but with a modern, self-aware sensibility. Strongest are the two years in which we spend the most time, 1793 and 1980. In the former, Agnes is a bewigged lady of leisure, trapped in an unhappy marriage with the brutish, syphilitic George (Nick Frost) and pining for Alex, now a local highwayman. Heightened sound design from Martin Pavey surrounds George with growling vibrations, underscoring his coarse, animalistic behaviour — and the fact that he is the reincarnation of 17th century Agnes’s dog.

Sound design and the score from Toydrum, which evolves from traditional strings to surreal electronic strains, link the time periods with repeated refrains and give us access into Agnes’s fragile mental state. (She is no traditional heroine, rather an unreliable, selfish and often foolish protagonist.) The colour palette is equally well-used, motifs of red and purple — the tinge of desire — stitched throughout each segment.

Toydrum (with whom Lowe also collaborated on Prevenge) is also responsible for the pitch-perfect New Romantic pop hit sung by Alex, now a world famous superstar, in the 1980 New York-set segment. (Wales, where the film shot for three weeks in 2022, makes for an endearingly unconvincing Big Apple.) “I stole your heart”, Alex warbles, harking back to his 1793 highwayman theft of Agnes’s jewelled choker. But, even though she is convinced he is sending her love messages in the lyrics, Agnes now finds herself just one of his legions of obsessive fans.

Together with repeated use of the same props and main/background characters (including a scene-stealing Kate Dickie), a narrative thread of vulnerability, loneliness and delusion also pulls the film together into a cohesive whole. There is the sense that, slowly, Agnes is learning from her mistakes, leading to a moment of realisation that finally breaks the cycle. (It can be no accident that key moments for Agnes occur in 1793, the middle of the Enlightenment – and soon after authors Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges published their influential works on womens’ rights – and in 1980, a progressive time for the modern feminist movement.) 

At this point, Timestalker shifts a gear, decisively overturning traditional romcom messaging that true love conquers all and advocating that, first and foremost, women must love themselves. It may be an obvious note on which to end this entertaining romp through the ages, but it is no less satisfying for that.