REINCARNATION COMEDY-DRAMA TIMESTALKER IS A CENTURIES-SPANNING, GENRE-HOPPING EXTRAVAGANZA. WE ASKED FILMMAKER ALICE LOWE TO WRITE ABOUT WHERE IT CAME FROM — AND HOW THE HELL SHE DID IT...

Writerdirector-star Alice Lowe as the timetravelling Agnes,

Hello, 1980!; Good hair days;

Lowe has a breather in front of a shot-board.

THE BEFORE TIME

(2016)

I’m both a postpartum mum and filmmaker. And broke, actually. Making a film is such a joyous miracle that you become aware that, proportional to the human lifespan, because of the average length of gestation of a British indie film (YEARS), you haven’t much Time. After so many reincarnations in my career, I’d be pretty lucky to get to go again. You’d better fill the film with all your favourite things: carriages, aerobics, masks, wigs, dildos, axes, pink cats. What will you do with this, your one, precious film?

PRE-PRE-PRODUCTION

(2017-2019)

We’re trying to raise finance for the script. But a) I am pregnant again, and b) Covid is about to hit.

I’d wanted to write something about mortality, second chances, the sadness of wanting something, as timeless as I could make it. Inspired by Powell &Pressburger, the Technicolor films I watched in childhood, theatrical fantasies seemingly relegated to some kind of prop cupboard. Colour, symbolism, fantasy. Not fashionable, apparently. I wanted to dig it out. Make something wholeheartedly, unashamedly a fantasy. Romantic with both small and capital R. Like the Kate Bush videos I adore, the Henson movies I rewatched, the conceptual comedies I grew up on.

Make-up designer Nik Buck is way out of our league. She did my make-up for Edgar Wright’s The World’s End. I’d never met anyone with such a similarly extensive knowledge of the 1980s, Nik Kershaw, Brian Froud. I tell her about the project... A woman (Agnes) who falls in love (with Alex) and then dies horribly, only to come back to life again, over seven different time periods. A reincarnation romcom. Nik wanted in. But over several years of the film living and dying a death, it looked like a pipe dream.

But Nik stayed loyal to the project. As did Jacob Anderson, the genius actor and musician whom I saw as Scipio, a mercurial deus ex machina. And then there’s TOYDRUM, the crazily talented composer duo who worked with me on my last film, Prevenge. So, excited about the prospect of knitting different époques together with music, they started writing.