FrightFest review – The Alice Paradox
Theoretical physicists Alice Narcissi (Jessica Kinsey) and Bob Echo (Gwithian Evans) have contributed to a project supervised by the unseen Professor Zarathustra which has led to a big breakthrough – a process for travelling back in time by fifteen minutes – but is taken over by the slightly sinister government. Alice is piqued because the project becoming secret means no publication, no credit and no career advancement. So she uses the gizmo, only to discover that time travel is actually impossible thanks to the kill-your-grandfather paradox but you can step into the past of an alternate timeline.
Alice encounters versions of herself and Bob who have had similar experiences with their version of the Z Project, with a slightly more sinister government (spook Madeline Smith wears dark glasses here). The major difference between worlds here is unusual, or at least the major difference Alice bothers to notice – here, science is carried out collectively without great men being credited. The Theory of Relativity is ascribed to Berne University rather than Einstein. For all Alice knows, in the other world Count Binface is Prime Minister and Argentina won the Falklands War – she just doesn’t ask about things outside her narrow sphere of interest, which is an interesting characterisation for someone whose concerns are theoretically cosmic and whose voyaging is an unprecedented step into the unknown.
Written and directed by William Brooke, The Alice Paradox is an unusual essay in multiverse theory, with a distinctive widescreen look (lots of concrete) and quiet, effective lead performance(s) from Kinsey as the two Alices, who are more similar than not but have a strange effect on each other. For all that it visits another universe, the film stays close to home – the Alices are under house arrest in the other world, and start to ask whether being so close to the blackboard all the time has worked out well for either of them.
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