Starring Alice Lowe, Nick Frost, Aneurin Barnard

Written & Directed by Alice Lowe

Vertigo Releasing – In cinemas now.

Each time Agnes is reincarnated – from the 1680s to a dystopian future – she makes the same mistake, falling in love with the wrong man.

There are definitely things to enjoy about Alice Lowe’s epoch-skipping anti-romcom, Timestalker. The idea is decent enough. We all know how easy it is to slip into painful patterns of behaviour, repeating our mistakes, especially when it comes to falling into unsuitable relationships. It’s a lot of fun to follow Alice Lowe’s Agnes, whose ill-fated infatuations have comically terminal consequences, only for her to find herself reborn decades later, facing the same doomed predicament.

Think Groundhog Day meets Horrible Histories.

It’s certainly imaginative and Lowe gives herself some funny, edgy stuff to do as she is reincarnated multiple times down the centuries, the movie asking whether she will ever be able to free herself from this toxic cycle.

Without doubt, I like the idea of this movie, the issue is with its execution.

The biggest problem is its bitty, uneven structure. After a short prologue in 17th century rural Scotland, we skip forward for an extended visit to an 18th century English rural estate. A fleeting stop in the 1840s acts as a bridge to 1980s Manhattan – the emotional core of the film – before hopping back to 1940s wartime London, and then leapfrogging to some kind of dystopian future.

The jumps feel random at times. Why on earth are we in Manhattan, for example? The movie was shot in Wales (and looks like it, too) and only one or two of the actors even attempt American accents. There’s no plot reason to necessitate the pretence that we are Stateside. The dislocation serves only as a distraction. The brief jump back to wartime London seems to be apropos of nothing. And I had no idea what the futuristic coda was supposed to contribute. A better structure would have made sense of the time leaps. What we’re left with are a few historical sketches and two extended, but incomplete period dramas. There are themes and motifs but none of it really hangs together.

Nonetheless, I was willing it to work, just as I was willing it to look better as a film. I’m guessing the budget was miniscule and so trying to replicate no less than six time zones was simply a challenge too far, much of the design looking cobbled together at the last minute. Let’s wave a bit of fabric around to emulate a rock concert, that’ll do! The poorly graded celluloid visuals are redolent of an ambitious 1980s student movie, whereas the film students of today are all using high-end digital to give their movies at least the appearance of visual slickness and confidence. Of course, there’s a place for retro-tackiness, but Timestalker would have benefited from a cleaner look so that the audience could spend less time worrying about its cheap-as-chips patina and focus on the story Lowe was trying to tell.

Verdict: Timestalker is interesting and amusing in places, but the script needed a lot more work. It’s just a bit too scrappy and incomplete to make it as enjoyable as I wanted it to be.

5/10

Martin Jameson

http://www.ninjamarmoset.com