I recently had a really lovely chat with Alice Lowe regarding her new film Timestalker, a quantum leaping sci-fi rom/com which she wrote, directed and starred in. As we shall see, the film is an intensely personal vision from this idiosyncratic filmmaker. As we talked, Alice described herself "as a rambler." Not in the Sightseers sense of the word of taking long walks for pleasure in the countryside: she's implying that she goes on a bit. I see her point... I thought we'd have about 20 minutes, yet the conversation was a generous hour (and only came to an end because she had to introduce her actual film). But it wasn't what the dictionary defines as "talking at length in an inconsequential way" at all; Alice is brilliant company, speaking with impassioned fluency about film, AI, French cartoons, Welsh underpasses, et al. She's funny too, even doing a little impression of Maika Monroe at some point (listening back a lot of the recording is me laughing). Here is how it went.
I reread ‘Peado’ last night, your short story about time travel and toxic relationships, themes shared with Timestalker. What is it about this structure that interests you or intrigues you? (note- this story was published in 2016, and is an exceptionally dark horror story. When the initial word about Timestalker came out, an Alice Lowe film about time travel, I thought it was based on this odd little tale! "Never say never" said Alice when I told her- !),
Interesting question, I love conceptual stuff. And what conceptual stuff says about human psychology. We had this development point with the script, and an American company wanted us to put an actual time travel device in the film. But I really didn't want to. It's overexplaining stuff. I do think that we already have a time travel machine and it's editing! A film is a way of time travelling, you know? It's a way of controlling memories and fast forwarding and rewinding, and juxtaposing dreams and fantasies next to each other. And that's kind of the whole territory of Timestalker, it's a psychological piece really. You don't really need a time travel machine, this underestimation of the audience. Like in Big (note, Alice makes these sorts of references throughout, she’s a pop culture polymath), there's this wish fulfilment device, which you don't really need.
In the first time-travel story ever, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court he just gets bonked on the head!
Yes! It’s a dream sequence as well, which I think is an inherent element of the genre. I love both ways. It could be magic, or a trick played on the audience. Both things can be true, and audiences are au fait with that. All of cinema isn't real. Nothing is real!
You were saying about Big, and in the eighties there was this boom of time travel films, Back to the Future, The Terminator, Peggy Sue Got Married.
Yeah, Timestalker is really influenced by eighties films, which had a fun way of dealing with massive ideas. This boy traveling back in time with his mum fancying him, which was a big mainstream hit! The eighties got away with dealing with complex matters in a light way. I miss that we don't really get to explore these fun and fresh ideas, because we don't get those sort of conceptual films anymore.
I'm always interested in how films get made, especially Welsh films. How was Ffilm Cymru involved with Timestalker and what is your relationship with Wales?
So, Western Edge Pictures is a Welsh company and Vaughan Sivell is a Welsh man, and it was really through a series of flukes that I started working with them. I did my first film called Prevenge with them and Western Edge Pictures had an existing relationship with Film Wales, and so we got some funding from them which meant Welsh crew, Welsh production team, and Welsh locations. The DOP of both my films, Ryan Eddleston, lives in Cardiff and was a huge part of what I've done: sometimes if the scene is in a bit of a rut, finding the right location makes the difference. Ryan is a genius location manager. And the personality of Wales, and Cardiff in particular, became knitted into the fabric of Prevenge and what Prevenge was. That underpass in Prevenge with really bright tiles, I had this idea they were everywhere and wanted to use them. Also, I knew that Cardiff had an amazing Hallowe'en scene, which at times felt unnerving and edgy because people so go to town with it (Note: Alice isn't wrong- my last two Hallowe'en outfits were the Bride of Frankenstein and then Carrie, which was a military drill of applied eye make-up and fake blood). I wanted to film the Hallowe'en scene in Cardiff with real people on that night. The producers were up for that and understood what I was trying to achieve. It felt like we wouldn't be able to do such a thing in any other major city. A lot of people said to me they'd never seen Cardiff that way, and it felt like they were watching Mean Streets! It's such an amazing location. So many different and rich landscapes.
And with Timestalker we had scenes set in Scotland, or in a mystical cave, or in Epping forest. There's something about recreating those places where it's not those places. And it becomes something else, it creates its own psychological space. I'm not really interested in reality, I'm more interested in where you meet the audience expectations with this new reality you're creating. Then it feels completely fresh. There is a bit of familiarity, but also the sense that it isn't quite the same (note: this is exactly what I enjoy about Alice's films, this reflexive sensation of unreality which seems characteristic to cinema, with its potential manipulations of linear time and space). And that's what I love about filming in Wales, this new cinematic territory. It's exciting for any Welsh filmmakers growing up here. Instead of going somewhere else, use what's around you. There's such a different vibe here. It's like John Boorman, who made Ireland his spiritual home: I can't imagine not doing it here!
Aneurin Barnard, who plays the lead in Timestalker, is a Welsh man and he says that despite Wales being such a mythical and magical place there's this sentiment in the arts that people need to go somewhere else. Aneurin says that Wales is such a mysterious, folkloric place, where you can dig up these stories that are psychologically useful to understand our national identity. That's important, especially at a time when there's a great deal of shame, not unreasonable shame, about being from Britain. Like, how do we move forward? The truth is we're not all part of one big lump of people, we have individual identities, we come from a tiny place in Wales, or our grandparents are Irish immigrants. Everyone has a story, and it's healthy to embrace it, especially when it comes to British films.
I sometimes mentor young filmmakers, and I say to them to find what's close to you, to find your own story, to work with your friends, to work with what you have. You have to have a fresh perspective. Hollywood isn't necessarily something to aspire to: you can start where you are. That's what I’m trying to do. I'm not trying to emulate a Hollywood career. Hollywood can come to me! How does something become exportable? It's not by copying what people are doing elsewhere. In the British film industry, we've lost what made us unique in first place on the world stage. Timestalker is a lot about fusing a modern sensibility with identity, which you can lose.
Yeah, that idiosyncrasy...
It plays into my feelings about AI. I see the film as a vessel for personality. What is the human soul? It's memories, thoughts, dreams. If AI starts writing films then all of that is obliterated. I am reluctantly interested in tech as tool, it's more the algorithms that corporations and streamers use, that data, that's what's depressing. Not the tool itself but the way it's being utilised.
It's like more of what they think we like rather than challenging with something new.
Even with Timestalker it was difficult to get funding, to get the right festival premiere. I really believed in it and had faith in it. Yet people had doubts about it and didn't get what it was. I really don't think people know what they want until they see it. Algorithms are all to do with past data, it can't predict the future, and that's where it falls down for me. A recipe for the same stuff over and over again, an increasing blandness to get as many people to like it as possible. There needs to be this mutant element to make something new, which comes from humans! Mistakes are important and good because that's where you find new things.
I love Timestalker's soundtrack...
I collaborated with Toydrum on a short film. They've got a background as an electronic band, and they're extremely open minded, so I'm increasingly pushing them beyond their comfort zone...
That mutant element!
Yes! I think the relationship works for that reason. I ask them can you do this, and they go "not really but we'll give it a go," and what they come up with is so amazing. Also, I like that their music is not generic. It's authored, it has personality. There is a storytelling element to it. With Prevenge I didn't want a generic horror or thriller track, it had to have identity. It must be unique. I love a motif; give me melody; give me recurrence! Motifs are being phased out, though...
What? When did this come in?!
Music is being outsourced. There's no overall plan to it, so it becomes generic. Motifs are massively important to Timestalker with its themes of reincarnation. There are recurring emotions, recurring characters who have their own themes. It was a slow process. It took seven years (she howls with laughter). But we put together this palette of emotions tap into. The music was a huge part of it.
Any favourite soundtracks?
There's too many! I gave them Lalo Schifrin, who did the Musketeers films, I wanted that James Last style!
It is quite sweeping!
It is sweeping! I want epic, emotional, all that stuff that isn't fashionable is exactly what I want. It's her perspective. For me that's the key, whenever you're lost with the scene, remember whose perspective it is, and how she is feeling. How the music and camera angle reflects that. The vibe, any of it. It's not about how I'm feeling, it's her. The music was always over dramatic and romantic in Timestalker because it's her film and she's the lead character. Toydrum are getting lots of interest for the soundtrack because no one else is doing anything like it. They wrote this really authentic 80s pop song, which Aneurin sings lead vocal on and then there's a reprise of it that I sing, so all of my frustrated desires to be a pop star are fulfilled (more howls) with that New Romantics thing, that look (note: this song is an absolute heater, I adore it and having to listen back to the interview to transcribe it is preventing me from enjoying wall to wall replays...).
If you were going to show Timestalker on a bill with two other films, what would they be?
Oh my god, do you know what I was thinking about this! Jacob's Ladder. It's kind of like the flipside to Agnes. Although I haven't thought about it for a long time. It has that double reality, a dual reality: are you a fantasist or a realist? That’s what a lot of my work is about: here's the fantasy, and oh no here's the fucking reality! That's where the comedy comes from, that downfall.
You could kind of make Timestalker a horror story if you didn't tell it from her perspective. Like Baby Reindeer or whatever, basically you're seeing inside the stalker's head and it's not dark, they think it's rainbows and pink and fluffy and sweeping romantic music! You could actually choose to watch Timestalker as a horror film where she realises that none of that is real...
I’d love that version of Baby Reindeer!
Ok, I'll say Jacob's Ladder and Baby Reindeer...
(At this point Catrin, Alice's pal, reminds her about Black Narcissus...)
Oh god, Powell and Pressburger, you've reminded me. Powell and Pressburger were a huge influence. No that's what it should be. Maybe Colonel Blimp... No, A Matter of Life and Death. Jacob’s Ladder is the nightmare version, then A Matter of Life and Death is the heavenly version, and in the middle Timestalker!
Thanks Alice Lowe!