Timestalker, Joker, and Baby Reindeer all deal with the nasty side of romantic entanglement ā is this the year of the bad romance?
In Alice Lowe’s Timestalker, in cinemas today, our put-upon heroine isn’t the luckiest in love.
After chasing the same scoundrel across 400 years and taking multiple sharp instruments to the head, you’d have thought Lowe’s Agnes would have learnt her lesson. Alas, the more Aneurin Barnard’s rogue signals his disinterest (usually by running away immediately after her grisly demise), the more she’s convinced he’s the man for her. This is because, though Barnard’s character lives multiple lives as a heretic, a highwayman and a heartthrob, the greatest trick the film pulls is the reveal that Agnes herself isn’t very nice.
Aptly, Timestalker arrives a week after Joker: Folie à Deux told the story of a similar character at the other end of the budgetary spectrum. Lady Gaga’s ‘Lee’ Quinzel is sufficiently obsessed with Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck that she has herself locked in an asylum on the off chance she’ll get to meet her idol. Both have appeared in cinemas a month after Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer swept the Emmys with its tale of a female stalker chasing its comedian protagonist. Meanwhile, Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms examines the terrifying inner life of a woman obsessing over a serial killer.
We might still be waiting for the year’s definitive romcom, but as far as less cuddly couplings go, 2024 has left us spoiled for choice. Ranging from reciprocated, if toxic, romantic entanglements (Folie à Deux) to the entirely parasocial (Red Rooms), relationships, particularly those between men and women, have been thrown into the spotlight like never before.
As a sub-genre, it’s one that captures plenty of the themes we’re concerned with in the modern day. Social media culture has made cultivating one-sided relationships with people online far more commonplace than even a few years ago. Our fascination with true crime and psychotic men in particular has led to disrupted police investigations and a level of introspection arguably long overdue, even while Ryan Murphy continues his efforts to give every male murderer on the planet their own glossy Netflix biopic.
Obsession, too, is in the zeitgeist more than ever. Again on the topic of social media, constant comparisons and games of one-upmanship are encouraging us to spend more and more time perfecting one skill, or finding out more about a single topic until we can see ourselves alongside the influencers on our Instagram feeds. Even previously mundane hobbies – five-a-side football leagues, making clay pots, reading books – have been either monetised into side hustles or made so competitive they almost become a part-time job in themselves.
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In an era where romcoms and romance seem to have fallen out of fashion, and even romantic subplots in blockbusters are becoming less common, these films have all found ways to examine the oldest story trope in the book with a critical eye. By reversing the typical gender roles in the way these relationships are often portrayed on screen, we’re encouraged to see toxic entanglements with less real world baggage (data released by the Office for National Statistics found that between March 2023 and March 2024, an estimated 2.3% of men and 4% of women were victims of stalking in some form).
As a result, 2024 hasn’t been the most endearing year for men-women relationships on screen – but it has proved one of the more interesting. After decades of creepy men chasing women through airports and New York cityscapes, it’s refreshing, at least, to see the boot now on the other foot. Bad romance might not make us feel warm and fuzzy – but it might just make us think about good romance a little harder.