![Alice Lowe Takes Obsessive Crushes To The Absurdist Subsequent Stage By way of Time [SXSW]](https://dailydosequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/08160259/HanWay-Films_TIMESTALKER_Ludovic-Robert.jpg "Alice Lowe Takes Obsessive Crushes To The Absurdist Subsequent Stage By way of Time [SXSW]")
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When coping with an totally preposterous premise, it’s greatest to dive straight into the outrageousness of all of it and by no means let the viewers have a second to query it. Author/director Alice Lowe clearly understands the project together with her intelligent new absurdist comedy, “Timestalker,” which doesn’t waste a second triggering its ridiculous however fulfilling thought. A period-set romance and time-travel/reincarnation looping comedy, Lowe stars as Agnes, a hapless heroine who falls in love by way of time, attempting to comply with the identical man she fell head over heels for at first sight. It’s the “I’ll discover you!” exclamation that myriad separated characters have seemingly cried to at least one one other when misplaced to the multiverse of epochs (or in one thing as simple however achingly romantic as “Final Of The Mohicans”), solely taken the piss out and amped as much as hilariously foolish extremes.
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Initially set in The West of Scotland, 1688, spinsters Agnes and Meg (Tanya Reynolds) attend the execution of a pretty-faced heretic preacher named Alex (Aneurin Barnard). With the mysterious touring artist Scipio (Jacob Anderson from “Recreation Of Thrones”) sketching the scene close by, Agnes falls immediately in love with Alex upon seeing his twink-ish child face. Out of the blue compelled to rescue him from his plight, Agnes journeys over her canine George, impales herself on a close-by axe, and immediately dies.
For inexplicable causes—apart from love, infatuation, and even erotomania, which is stronger than the stream of time—she is then transported to Rural England in 1793 as an prosperous woman of leisure. George the canine is now her disgusting, boorish, and syphilitic-riddled husband (Nick Frost), and Meg, Scipio, and Alex are all current throughout the similar milieu as a brand new forged of characters. However the central proposition stays the identical: Agnes stays love-stricken and obsessive about Alex, satisfied they’re intertwined by destiny and meant to be collectively, lovers practically connecting by way of the threads of time. Alex, for his half, is both confused, disinterested, unconvinced, or just a little little bit of all three. Usually, all the opposite characters (Frost, the spoiler; Anderson, the sage; and Reynolds, the buddy, although probably extra) play variations of the identical function.
By way of the Daybreak of Time, Victorian England, 1847, and New York within the romantic New Wave-y ’80s, the story and cycle retains repeating: Agnes looking for Alex and persuade him their romance is predestined. However is all a whimsical phantasm, blinded by the final word crush? Within the Nineteen Eighties, the place the movie finally ends up spending quite a lot of its center half—and maybe the funniest, most profitable, and significant of all of the segments— Alex performs a well-known New Wave pop star and Agnes, an obsessive fangirl attempting to steer him as soon as once more to consider they’re destined to be collectively.
However what initially looks as if a daft romantic love-at-first fairy story concerning the perils of unrequited love spliced by way of numerous genres of time journey, reincarnation, and time looping takes on a poisonous high quality of unhealthy obsessiveness evocative of the movie’s cheeky title. Ultimately, “Timestalker” appears to behave as an amusing and ingenious feature-length riff on the psychological phenomenon of limerence—the state of involuntary obsession with one other particular person, which is distinguishable from love and lust (although Agnes certainly feels each for Alex).
Furthermore, the complete notion of the movie appears knowingly self-effacing and self-censuring; all of us have fallen for the improper particular person in our lives, and Lowe seems to venture the thought as a life-long affliction. From the identical inventive crew behind Lowe’s horror being pregnant comedy “Prevenge,” a few of that very same forged (Kate Dickie, Dan Renton Skinner, Mike Wozniak) additionally return for this newest genre-comedy hybrid effort)
As outlandish as “Timestalker” is, Lowe’s movie holds its thought collectively nicely with model, wit, resourceful creativeness, nice lovelorn music, the sincerity behind heartbreak and deep craving, and hilarious, sharp laughs in addition (“What you been doing?” a model of Meg asks within the Nineteen Eighties. ‘I’ve been altering my destiny,” Agnes says. The amusing reply: “Actually? It simply seems such as you obtained a perm?”).
Clearly made on a finances, Lowe and her crew additionally strike an ideal tonal stability the place all the pieces feels plausible on this eccentric setting. Like an infectiously dynamic, however melancholy synthy-Pleasure Division music (looooove, love will tear us aside once more), Lowe threads the needle of all of the movie’s qualities reasonably completely. As a result of as foolish and farcical as “Timestalker” might be (“Don’t anticipate any assist from me, karma’s a bitch.” “So are you!” is one other hilarious repartee), it weaves resonant themes of meant-to-be destiny, longing, want, the romantic ache of unknowable previous lives, and different notions of dreamy, quixotic pining right into a heartfelt form.
Lowe additionally cannily performs with the thought of feminism and liberated girls— even lesbianism, as a viable different to silly, artless males—whereas toying shrewdly with the notion that we’re all witless slaves to like regardless of how enlightened we’d declare to be. And at a quick 90 minutes, “Timestalker” is aware of shortly mix laughs, fixed craving, and even real pathos all through all its eras.
Sensible males have stated solely fools rush in, however Lowe says the humiliation of ardour is everlasting; generally, we have to repeat the identical errors as a way to be taught, and it’s onerous to assist falling in love when continuously, clumsily tripping by way of time. [B+]
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