There is something highly seductive about the idea that we all have a soulmate. The problem is that there could be a million obstacles standing between you and your beloved. Maybe they live on another continent, or work on a nuclear submarine or are already married to an atypically moral billionaire.
To invest everything in the hope that there is one true love for you out there is to risk stepping on a cosmic banana peel. Timestalker – the eccentric new film from writer, director and star Alice Lowe – embraces the possibilities of that banana peel, finding the farce in dreamy, high-minded romance. As the title suggests, it also turbocharges the idea by adding some Doctor Who time-travel energy.
Imagine two eternal souls, destined to be entwined, reincarnating through history and struggling against social conventions to try and be together. Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter It is a big swing for Lowe, who previously co-wrote and starred in the caravanning serial killers comedy Sightseers (2012) before making her directorial debut with Prevenge (2016), a wild slasher about an expectant mum seemingly compelled by her unborn child to violently avenge her husband’s death. (Lowe, who also wrote and starred, made the film in the latter stages of her own pregnancy.
) After those contemporary satires, Timestalker expands Lowe’s creative canvas by hitching its oxcart to the sort of thing that.