In Alice Lowe’s first feature since Prevenge in 2016, which announced the actress and writer as a talented director to boot, we are witness to an epic romantic saga of unrequited love through the ages, a time loop of reincarnated passion being placed in all the wrong places. The metaphorical setup to Timestalker, playing up gendered stereotypes about the woman who can’t give up on the uncaring object of her affection, could have threatened to overwhelm the film in its simplicity, but in Lowe’s capable hands, it’s delivered with as much imagination and humor as one could hope for.
Pulling us from 1680s Scotland to the far future, and stopping along the way in several centuries in between, Timestalker is a deceptively ambitious film that makes the most of its relatively low budget, using garish colors and costumes with a playful spirit and hazy editing to emphasize the slippages of time. From a basic premise recognizable enough to us all — we all have that one friend who keeps falling for the wrong person, over and over again… maybe it’s you — Lowe charts a centuries-long version of the idea, with enough visual and thematic panache to help it hit just right.
Best of all, the film is consistently hilarious, with sharp wit that passes by at a rapid pace and suffused with plenty of gags — Lowe is not above a well-timed and executed pratfall, or using the rule of threes with a Georgian-era dildo. The comedy is weaponized quite expertly to send up familiar romance narratives and tropes across time and space, rarely through direct parody but instead via tightly-observed patterns and repetitions. It all ultimately manifests itself into a crude but powerful joke about the elusive nature of self-determination in love and in life, leading to an inevitable, if ever-so-slightly un-cathartic, ending stinger.
Timestalker is not without its flaws, most notably in its handling of queerness. While clearly tuned right into heterosexual romance clichés, the film has less to say about queer love in the same way, instead largely using it as a simple crutch through the character of Meg (Tanya Reynolds), who is likewise perpetually pining after Agnes (Lowe). Unlike the comparably nuanced development of Agnes’ self-discovery throughout the film, or even simply the variety of tropes she comes to embody, Meg is rather one-note, often the butt of the same repeated punchline — as Agnes, 1980 version, bluntly puts it to Meg, “I’d rather be a slave than a lesbian.” Perhaps the Timestalker for queer romance is for someone else to make.
That notable limitation aside, Timestalker is a genuinely riotous ride, rarely staying in one time period long enough to overstay its welcome, whizzing through the eras of attachments, passions, fantasies, and intensities, lived through the experience of a single woman. The search for eternal love is fraught and potentially foolish, but the romance resonates through generations nonetheless. Lowe, whether dressed up as a wealthy kept woman in the 1700s or a punkish future rebel in the late 2100s, suggests that, well, it’s all a bit silly, isn’t it?
Published as part of Fantasia Fest 2024 — Dispatch 3.
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