'Timestalker' review: Alice Lowe brings Monty Python mayhem to period romance | 9XG056V | 2024-03-22 10:08:01
Time travel and love collide with bloody slapstick in Timestalker, Alice Lowe's much-anticipated follow-up to Prevenge. The place her final film starred the writer/director as a pregnant mom who turns serial killer at the urging of her very demanding fetus, her latest comedy leans away from horror and into romance. Nevertheless it's still rattling twisted — and deliciously so!&
Lowe, who wrote, directed, and stars in Timestalker, begins this story of love, obsession, and recurring decapitations in 1688. There, Agnes (Lowe) is an impoverished spinner. When she's not making vibrant balls of pink yarn or scolding her surly Scottie canine, George, she's ogling a scorching, heretic preacher (Aneurin Barnard). In this begin of the age of aristocracy, his sacrilegious antics lead him to a public execution. However earlier than his pretty head is perhaps harmed, Agnes haphazardly intervenes, saving his life —& however dropping her personal.&
This is not a spoiler. It's the very first sequence of Timestalker, so named because Agnes will awaken in another life, restored and ready to chase romance with this man once extra. Every age provides her a new setting, but the same band of players and the prospect to make the identical dangerous decisions. So begins a madcap movie that questions an more and more troubling tenant of old-school rom-coms: stalking.&
Timestalker is a bloody good time.&
Before the film's world premiere at SXSW, Lowe stated in her curtain speech that Timerstalker is an arrogance undertaking because she wrote, directed, and stars in it. Nevertheless it's exhausting to imagine others describing it as such. Whereas she is the funky movie's main woman, Agnes isn't some glamorous, noble, or remotely heroic character. As an alternative, she's a selfish clown, so targeted on her willpower to win her one real love that she's fairly horrid to everybody else.& (Kenneth Branagh could never.)
Lowe's film acknowledges Agnes's absurdity with a biting humorousness. In 1793, she is an aristocrat with all one may think a lady of the age might want: a rich husband (a growling Nick Frost), a grand house, a loyal servant (a slyly hilarious Tanya Reynolds), and a cultured picket dildo. But when she is gloomy, she calls for her child, only to be shortly disgusted, caterwauling that the toddler clearly hates her.&
Agnes shows this similar self-obsessiveness in a number of eras, together with 1980s New York Metropolis, where her heretic is a New Romantic rock star within the vein of Adam Ant. Her sharp tongue and indulgent eye rolls are outrageously humorous, as she is actually a parody of rom-com heroines whose focus is insufferably on the thought of their one real love. Meanwhile, her love curiosity, Alex, is an unapologetic shit, stabbing not only his would-be lover within the again but in addition the hallowed concept of "the one" as a dream guy.
Their comeuppance for this deeply toxic dynamic is violence as surprising as it's humorous. At the movie's world premiere, audiences with no concept what they have been in for let loose gasps of horror and squeals of alarm as Lowe's romantic comedy pitched itself unapologetically off the rails into the macabre. While some might be turned off together with her manic bloodlust, fans of Prevenge will cheer.&
Alice Lowe and Aneurin Barnard are a match made in hell.&
Leaping lots of of years from one scene to the subsequent, Lowe makes marvelous use of costumes and setting to loosely parody iconic eras of romance. Pratfalls of muck and violence make these eras less glossy than period romances would ever dare. Within the '80s, Lowe's bodily comedy stretches into the period's obsession with aerobics and large permed hair. However she's no Working Woman with profession objectives and dashing men chasing her. She's a sulking stalker with a twisted sense of devotion. And Lowe manages to make this unnerving while giggle-inducing —& chiefly due to how callous yet incompetent her heroine is in this quest for Alex.&
For his part, Barnard smoothly suits the attractive priest position initially. His swagger interprets nicely to a reckless highwayman and an boastful musician. All of the while, he dares to dig into the characters' depravities, urging the audience to know Agnes' preliminary attraction to him whereas marveling over her prolonged affection, as he's repeatedly outed as 1) not that into her, and a couple of) a wanker. Primarily, these two are kinetic and chaotic onscreen, turning the tables on rom-com expectations. This isn't a couple for which you root for their coming together. As an alternative, you root for heads to roll —& one particularly.
Nick Frost and Jacob Anderson are scene-stealing cads.&
Jumping throughout time with Agnes and Alex are additionally her gal pal, Meg (Tanya Reynolds); a surly servant (Interview with a Vampire's Jacob Anderson); and an ornery oaf (Frost). Reynolds' job is to ground the story with pleas for Agnes to get her shit collectively, primarily appearing as the angel on the protagonist's shoulder. Anderson, however, is a satan, pushing for a selection which may deliver "revolution," a recurring buzz word whether or not he is an artist, butler, or talent handler. Within his tempting recommendation, there's a sneaking disinterest in Agnes's future. Yet it is exciting to observe Anderson toy with the others, as he carries with him a mix of barely repressed ire and profound boredom. It is easy to take a position his huffing character does not need change as much as he just need these cycles to finish.
Then there's Nick Frost, who is growling and gross, whether a lord of a grand estate or a wannabe beau with criminally dangerous '80s hair. (Anderson, however, is downright swoon-worthy in New Romantic gear and a Jheri curl.) To say rather more about Frost's part can be to provide too much away. Suffice to say, the comedic actor beloved for his dopey sidekicks in the Cornetto trilogy chucks away allure to relish being a rotten baddie here.&
Timestalker is a rollicking misadventure in romance.&
With eras tied together not only with forged but in addition with a recurring violent pink, Timestalker has a playful humorousness in its touring across time. Demise is a punchline, and love is the setup. Lowe is ruthless and riveting as she annihilates the frothy joys of romantic comedies. Yet I pined for a bit more when it came to the film's plotting. The zipping forwards and backwards is exciting. However sooner or later, the plot feels so planted in the '80s that jumps back rattle relatively than invigorate.&
This pacing challenge aside, Timestalker is a demented romp by means of romance with a sense of humor so sharp that in fact there's gushing blood.& &
Timestalker was reviewed out of SXSW 2024.&
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