At The Movies: Hilarious anti-romance Timestalker, flat biopic Widow Clicquot

Timestalker (NC16)

91 minutes, opens on Nov 21
★★★★☆

The story: Across history, hapless Agnes (Alice Lowe) falls for the same dashing stranger (Aneurin Barnard), dies violently in her unrequited pursuit of him, and is reincarnated a century later to begin anew the cycle of disappointment and death.

The hilarious anti-romance Timestalker by Lowe – the Prevenge (2016) writer-director’s sophomore feature – confirms the comedienne as British indie cinema’s latest bright wit.

It all begins in 1688 Scotland, when spinster peasant Agnes beholds heretic preacher Alex being led to the gallows. She is smitten. While running to him, bedazzled, she trips on a poleaxe and is impaled. “I will find you,” she says.

And she does, over and over: in 1793 Georgian England, where she is a bored aristocrat trophy wife and he is a sexy highwayman; as a Victorian-era schoolteacher; as a stalker fan of his sulky pop idol in 1980s New York; in 1940 and on to a dystopian 2117.

The futile quest to simply catch his attention ends always in her decapitation.

As the actress-star, Lowe delivers the bawdy Monty Python-esque gags with delicious deadpan snap.

As a film-maker, she applies period-distinct moods and aesthetics to retell a clever timeless tale of a woman literally losing her head over Mr Wrong.

A piggish Nick Frost and faithful handmaiden Tanya Reynolds are the supporting ensemble reappearing as iterations of their past, present and future selves along with a mysterious observer (Jacob Anderson). They, too, are trapped in a bad pattern, infatuated with Agnes.

These fools for love never learn despite their multiple lifetimes of humiliating rejection. Counselled by a tarot card reader to better herself, Agnes gets a perm and takes up aerobics.

Hot take: Inventive and subversive, this cautionary fable on erotomania is a comedy for the ages.

Widow Clicquot (M18)

90 minutes, now showing
★★☆☆☆

The story: Widowed in 1805 at age 27, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennett) fought patriarchy to build her late husband’s (Tom Sturridge) fledging winery in Reims into among the greatest of France’s champagne empires.

Spare a thought for Barbe-Nicole when you next pop a Veuve Clicquot.

The title, Widow Clicquot, is an English translation of the label. As this 19th-century oeno-biopic tells it, her father-in-law (Ben Miles) pushed to sell their family vines to rivals.

These hectares were a harvest away from bankruptcy. She had to hawk her personal possessions to pay her workers. All this, after enduring a volatile marriage to a depressive.

It is nonetheless hard to feel her pain amid the tasteful trappings of British director Thomas Napper.

Even more incongruously, this origin story of a premium French brand features a British-accented English cast with an American in the lead.

Bennett (The Girl On A Train, 2016; Swallow, 2019) can be spellbinding. She cannot, however, plausibly be Barbe-Nicole, also because the Grande Dame of Champagne exists here less as a person than at the service of a feminist manifesto.

The radical entrepreneur conquered the imperial courts of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars by allying with a rakish wine merchant (Sam Riley) to elude the trade embargo. But the movie is vague on the practicalities of viticulture central to her legacy, on her riddling process and her innovation of rose champagne.

She is only seen feverishly blending in her cellar, then smashing her unsatisfactory experiments in frustration.

What a waste of a good drink, and of this fascinating woman as a subject.

Hot take: Was French superstar Isabelle Huppert unavailable?