52 Films by Women Vol 8. 45. Timestalker (Director: Alice Lowe)

 

Pictured: 'Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.' Alex of Nine Tassles (Aneurin Barnard) proves that chivalry is something to be scared of in writer-director-star Alice Lowe's time hopping anti-new-romantic comedy. 'Timestalker'. Still courtesy of Vertigo Releasing (UK)

Most British actresses who take a punt at directing generally stop after a single attempt. Rebecca Hall, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jessica Hynes, Dolly Wells and Romola Garai all exemplify ‘one and done’. Kudos to Alice Lowe who scores ‘two and cool’, with Timestalker, the amusing, long-in-gestation follow-up to her 2016 debut, Prevenge. Both films are comedies that stretch a single idea to breaking point.

Once again, she takes the leading role, this time of Agnes, a 17^th Century lovelorn woman who falls for a performer, Alex (Aneurin Barnard) who is about to be put to death – her friends turn up for the gore. As he faces the rack, Alex’s mask is removed. Agnes is besotted, approaches him and ends up with a pike in her forehead. Alex escapes. For reasons not fully explained, rather justified through Mills and Boon logic, Agnes and Alex are reincarnated again and again across the centuries, Agnes repeatedly failing to capture Alex’s heart and meeting a grisly end until finally she decides to make a change.

In Prevenge, Lowe’s pregnant serial killer represents a threat to other people. In Timestalker, Agnes is only a danger to herself. She doesn’t know she’s reincarnated until she catches sight of Alex, who, in all his appearances, is vain and indifferent to her. Alex is a narcissist for all seasons, I half-expected him to announce that he would only allow himself to be played by a chimp. For that spectacle, catch Better Man, the biopic of Robbie Williams, pop star and one-fifth of ‘Take That’, this holiday season.

Lowe peppers her film with flash forwards of Agnes’ various guises. Some visits to her past lives are brief, others more fleshed out. There is a running joke about being reincarnated as Cleopatra, because every woman recalling their past life has ruled Egypt for 21 years and looks like Elizabeth Taylor. Women’s actual past lives are better referred to as previous marriages.

The two longest sections are set in 1793 and 1980 respectively. In the first, Agnes is drawn to the highwayman, Alex of Nine Tassles (could be Nine Elms, for all I know), a masked bandit who demands trinkets from the inconvenienced wealthy. Alex just wants to be notorious, a legend in his own bath time. He models himself on Dick Turpin, the 18^th Century highwayman executed in 1739 for horse theft and played on British television by Richard O’Sullivan. I’ve no doubt that Lowe was influenced by the pop video stylings of Adam Ant, who scored a hit with his song, ‘Stand and Deliver’. Agnes is pampered by her maid (Tanya Reynolds) but treated with contempt by her boorish, Henry VIII-like husband, George (Nick Frost). Grunting and tearing at chicken legs with Charles Laughton-like disdain, Frost makes a terrific entrance, though I was disappointed that Lowe had him speak. I wondered if Lowe, a student of comedy, would pay homage to Ronnie Barker’s Futtock’s End, which featured semi-coherent but nonetheless vocabulary-free muttering. No such incidental pleasure.

Agnes orders her carriage to travel up and down the same stretch of road repeatedly before finally meeting Alex, who relieves her of her jewellery; Agnes practically has it gift-wrapped for him. George is aggrieved that she has nothing to wear for the party and demands that she change her wig. At the aforementioned social event, Agnes sees Alex again, noting that he retained her largest precious stone despite selling the rest to improve his wardrobe. George sees them together and intervenes. The episode features some crude humour, including a plaster cast of a dildo, which you wouldn’t ordinarily see on Antiques Roadshow – maybe in ‘Trash in the Attic’. It climaxes with George planning to take revenge against Agnes in her future lives, turning him into another time stalker.

In 1980, a lycra-clad Agnes finds herself in New York, taking part in keep fit classes, Lowe having watched a Jane Fonda workout video or two. This section of the film is so obviously not filmed in America that I concluded that Lowe was paying homage to Superman IV – The Quest for Peace in which Milton Keynes substituted for Metropolis. This time Alex is a British pop star hooked on drugs. After paying $300 to a medium, who advises her not to die this time, Agnes poses as a journalist to interview her idol. Alex’s press agent (Jacob Anderson) sees through her façade but offers her the opportunity to give it her best shot. He hates his boss and wouldn’t mind at all if Agnes were to assassinate him. Lowe includes a John Lennon joke of which the ‘rattle your jewellery’ former Beatle might have approved, though it skirts the boundaries of poor taste. Frost re-appears sporting a basin wig that he might have borrowed from The Fast Show’s John Thomson, or indeed The Monkees.

Pictured: Kings and Queen of the Wild Frontier: Aneurin Barnard, Jacob Anderson and Alice Lowe in the 1980s section of the reincarnation century-hopping comedy, 'Timestalker', written and directed by Alice Lowe. Still courtesy of Vertigo Releasing / Western Edge Pictures (UK)

While Lowe maintains the same accent throughout, Barnard is encouraged to vary his tone. He is irritatingly nasal in the ‘80s section. Frost amps up George’s loathsomeness, staring at Agnes from directly opposite her apartment and licking a restaurant window psychotically – is there any other way – whilst Agnes meets the press agent. He is a pressure cooker past his five-year warranty, destined to break down at any moment.

Agnes does indeed appear as Cleopatra in an unexpected reversal of the time dial. In the 1980 section, she takes part in a romantics anonymous group, dealing with her debilitating Robert Palmer-like addiction to love.

Timestalker doesn’t so much end as feature the cast running towards the camera some time in the 22^nd Century. There is a pink papier-maché floating heart that consumes some of the effects budget. Lowe makes the point that the male objects of obsessive love are generally unworthy. Female friendship offers a more enriching experience. Lowe has fun with lighting, wigs and costumes; this is the film’s raison d’être. The cast includes Kate Dickie who also appeared in Prevenge. Like Reynolds, Dickie is there to make Lowe’s Agnes seem like the least-worst romantic option. This does not come across as vanity, rather establishing Lowe’s Agnes as a valid romantic hero. The biggest laugh is generated by the brief Victorian era sequence in which Agnes’ demise is swift. It is as if Lowe didn’t want to miss out a century but didn’t have the appetite for Victoriana.

Reviewed at PictureHouse Central, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, Tuesday 8 October 2024, 18:00 ‘Film Club’ screening