MIFF 2024 Film Review - Timestalker

Images courtesy of Common State.

There comes a time in many directors' filmographies where they make an epic story that spans multiple decades, some even take the non-linear approach and cut between multiple time periods: Cloud Atlas, The Fountain, Orlando, two staples of cinema have always been time and romance. Such concepts often lead to overwhelmingly emotional films, but Alice Lowe takes that genre of cinema to the comedic absurd with her new film Timestalker. 

Timestalker tells the story of a woman named Agnes who keeps falling in love with the wrong man in several different time periods, after being continuously reincarnated. Her love of this man, Alex, results in her death, in 1680s peasantry, 1790s Aristocracy, the 1840s Victorian era, 1940s wartime, and finally in the 1980s, when she realises she needs to break this violent cycle. 

The film perfectly opens with the line “What time is it?” and bursts into a big title card displaying 1688, to immediately bring you into the bizarre, almost dreamlike tone of Agnes’ odyssey (typography nerds will have fun with the title cards whenever they appear). That bizarre tone is carried on with the colourful landscapes, and further with the elaborate period-piece costumes and appropriately strange locations. The low budget doesn’t get in the way of making a film that still looks quite impressive, especially considering all the different time periods, although the necessity for historical accuracy is negated by the style - accuracy simply doesn’t seem to be the point of the film. 

Agnes herself is a very interesting protagonist. It can be difficult for a film to work around a main character that is so deliriously stupid. Lowe brings a charismatic obliviousness to Agnes that makes her someone you can’t help but root for (or maybe feel sorry for) despite constantly being annoyed at her decisions. Agnes is joined by an ensemble cast who play versions of the same character in each time period. Aneurin Barnard brings a scared puppy energy to Alex, more often than not completely confused by everything going on. Nick Frost manages to be both disgusting and hilarious as Agnes’ abusive husband. Jacob Anderson has an air of sinister mystery about him, as if he knows what’s going to happen. Tanya Reynolds ties the whole thing together as the de facto audience surrogate character.

This is Lowe’s second directorial effort after 2018’s Prevenge, the horror-comedy which she directed and starred in whilst pregnant. Her directing in Timestalker is similarly absurd, but taken to even more exaggerated levels. From the campy performances, to the quirky camera angles, to the colourful production design, this film moves along swiftly between its multiple time periods with a Gilliam-esque sense of macabre glee. There’s more of an emphasis on slapstick here,  Lowe frequently tripping over seemingly nothing. There’s even some splat-stick: some excellently gory effects are on display, with each violent but mercifully swift death Agnes experiences. The visceral nature of the deaths offers a fun surprise each time. 

The tone can get a little muddled in the few attempts at genuine drama, but never distracts from the comedy at play, and the pacing is so fast it never manages to overstay its welcome. While mostly feeling like an anthology, staying in each time period for extended periods rather than constantly cross-cutting, there are points at which the editing gets in the way of the plot. The callbacks and foreshadowing are made almost too obvious with all the parallels being pointed out by insert-shots and an unnecessary third-act Saw style flashback montage, almost as if to make the point of the film as crystal clear as possible without a hint of ambiguity, when ambiguity is often the friend of surrealism like this. Venturing into spoilers, the film calls into question whether Agnes is actually being reincarnated or if it’s all just a dream, and luckily it bucks the psychological cliche by making Agnes’ plight a real one, ending the film in a hilarious twist of fate in the distant future with Alex now being the one chasing after his reincarnated love.

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Timestalker screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in cinemas and online August 8th-25th.

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