Fantasia 2024 Review: TIMESTALKER, Alice Lowe Chases The Love of Their Lives

They say "You'll find love when you stop looking for it." Well, I can tell you from experience that I stopped a long time ago and either I’m not looking very well or it’s complete bullshit. 

 

On the other hand you could be Agnes in Alice Lowe’s new film, Timestalker, and be doomed for eternity to repeat the same mistake, looking for and falling in love with the same, wrong man over and over again, from age to age, and die in some of the most comedic ways possible. 

 

In the time-traveling rom-com Agnes (played by Lowe) makes bad choices every time. It ends terribly and terribly funny, propelling Agnes into the next century to meet her ‘true love’ by chance (or intention in one hilarious case), or by fate, only to make the same mistake, over and over and over again. Still, Agnes believes that the next time will be the time when their love is reciprocated. 

 

Once again Alice Lowe writes, directs and stars in their own feature film. They have grabbed the bull by horns, stared it square in the eye, and told it to fuck off and go sit in the corner while the big girls play for a while. And once again Lowe has demonstrated that they are a monstrous talent at everything they do. 

 

Timestalker is a tremendously funny movie, with humor ranging from sharp wit to absurdity. Even when Agnes realizes the pattern of her obsession over the centuries, moments of seriousness are carried on the shoulders of humor.  It is not short of being unrelatable either. Either we ourselves or others around us have been stuck in the same patterns, the on-and-off relationships that everyone but those involved can see is happening. It may just take Agnes a few hundred years to realize it themselves. 

 

With the full weight of the United Kingdom’s film and television empire behind them, Lowe and their creative team recreate each era with Python-esque flair. Starting in 17th century Scotland and leapfrogging to 18th century England, then every century on into the future, the work from production designer Felicity Hickson and costume designer Rebecca Gore, deserves full praise for creativity and accuracy. 

 

Lowes’ Agnes is nothing without a stellar supporting cast watching our heroine with fondness, wisdom, malice or ambivalence. There is Tanya Reynolds as the devoted sidekick, perhaps an example of pure love. Jacob Anderson appears as the distributor of sage advice, often ignored by Agnes to their own peril. Nick Frost is Agnes’ antagonist, to show us when love becomes dangerous and threatening. Aneurin Barnard is largely funny as her eternal love interest who often does not know it. They are all called upon to take on a variety of characters and all were up to the task. 

 

Lowe proves once again that they are a force to reckon with. They are a comedic powerhouse taking on the issue of the one-sided relationship, a century-spanning observation of relationships where only one side is invested in making it work out, for them. Putting pen to paper and carrying on behind and in front of the camera Lowe is incredibly adept at doing it all. They skew the constructs of the rom-com for uproarious laughs while slyly speaking about the perils of some types of relationships.

 

I’m starting to think that having not found love by not looking for it, that I’m better off than Agnes ever was.