As an actress, author and director, Alice Lowe has by no means a lot cared should you just like the characters she’s penned for herself. From the vacationer who develops a style for homicide on her highway journey together with her boyfriend in Ben Wheatley’s “Sightseers” to a mother-to-be whose child evokes much more violence than simply kicking round in her stomach in her personal directorial debut, “Prevenge,” Lowe has sacrificed viewers approval for the license to discover darker corners of the feminine expertise. Nonetheless, which may make Agnes probably the most deliciously depressing of her creations, as somebody in determined want of affection, commencing a grimly amusing seek for the proper companion throughout centuries in “Timestalker.”
If comedy is tragedy plus time, there may be loads of it in Lowe’s newest movie. Beginning in Scotland within the late 1600s, Agnes can’t escape her attraction to the unsuitable man (Aneurin Barnard) and is tripped up repeatedly as reincarnated variations of herself can’t assist however make the identical mistake. She most likely ought to know higher when a meet-cute with the person of her desires happens proper earlier than he’s certain to be executed as a heretic. Though the group assembled could need to avert their eyes, Agnes locks hers with Barnard’s dangerous boy on his approach to the gallows and finds an immediate connection. Immediately smitten, she tries to hurry the stage to forestall his dying, unintentionally inflicting her personal within the course of.
The entire notion of soulmates turns into a type of torture in “Timestalker” when it leads Agnes to die almost a dozen instances, all in grotesque trend, in pursuit of Barnard’s wandering stranger. Nonetheless, all of the beheadings and immolations seem much less painful for Agnes than chasing some mounted romantic perfect, blinding her to all else in entrance of her. Often this has its advantages, as in 1793, when lusting after a lovable rogue (Barnard) can take her thoughts off crawling round in subservience because the spouse of a gluttonous aristocrat (Nick Frost). But within the Eighties New York the place Barnard has develop into a pop star dreamboat for the lots, Agnes comes throughout as a very deranged fan, coldly telling a feminine good friend (Tanya Reynolds) who appears as if she may very well be one thing extra, “I’d moderately be a slave than a lesbian” with none self-awareness.
Lowe and editors Chris Dickens and Mátyás Fekete create a little bit of a double-edged sword with their intelligent method to time leaping, inserting chapter breaks that current Agnes in several eras shifting by time whereas being unmoved by it in her demeanor. Providing glimpses of the longer term earlier than it occurs, these quick-cut montages may also generally really feel as in the event that they’re promising greater than “Timestalker” can ship. Costume designer Rebecca Gore and make-up, hair and prosthetic designer Nik Buck’s impressed work to make Agnes a chronological chameleon units off the creativeness so vividly that it may be mildly disappointing when the character is dropped into smaller-scale conditions than what these transient interstitials could have advised. Nonetheless, the director clearly has the deep love of style to know precisely the place to chop corners when a bigger finances might solely take the concepts at hand up to now.
Lowe can senses when the movie may develop tiresome when Agnes is caught in a self-defeating cycle, apt to throw in a very sadistic flourish into the combo any time a sense of redundancy might set in. With “Prevenge” cinematographer Ryan Eddleston as soon as once more behind the digital camera and musical duo Toydrum to offer a rating that may accommodate all of the totally different tonalities and time intervals, the writer-director can virtually get away with homicide onscreen. However Lowe correctly saves probably the most definitive demise for the considered being beholden to romantic flights of fancy moderately than the realities of a relationship that goes two methods. “Timestalker” could get a number of mileage out of unrequited affection, nevertheless it nonetheless offers audiences a lot to like.
