Lola

 

Champagne
Like Cola

Lola
Ireland/UK 2022
Directed by Andrew Legge
Cowtown Pictures

Warning: Some spoilers.

Lola is a new, ‘found footage’ science fiction film (after doing the usual festival circuits it played on general release over here in the UK in early 2023) shot entirely in black and white in a 4:3 aspect ratio (more or less) and expertly made to look like a cobbled together relic from the 1940s... and, it’s quite a long way into the movie before it just about justifies the polish of the story in terms of that footage and how it’s been deliberately manipulated. I could probably put my hand up and shout that there’s no way anybody would be silly enough to shoot certain sequences (which in itself has become a cliché of the found footage genre) or gotten all of the footage used to make the story work but... I’d be a bit of a killjoy in the case of this one and, it’s not too far a stretch when you take into account the invention at the heart of the movie.

So, the film starts off with various statements informing us that this was a ‘broadcast’ which was found in a house in 2021. We then, via one of many montage sequences used in the film, witness two sisters - Martha and Thomasina - who have been orphaned and left on their own to bring each other up - grow into adulthood by the late 1930s. And one of them, Thomasina (played by Emma Appleton), is an extremely ‘ahead of her time’ inventor. And, within minutes of the movie’s opening, she invents a time machine of sorts, which they call Lola. A screen that can intercept any broadcasts from a particular date and time in the future. Both she and Martha (played by Stefanie Martini) are quite taken with the music of the future... the first broadcast they pick up is footage of David Bowie singing Space Oddity.

And then the war comes and they realise they can predict where German bombers will hit and, through a very clever broadcasting method, they are able to anonymously warn the people of Britain where to evacuate before it happens, saving many lives in the process. The anonymous voice of the girls becomes known to the people of Britain as The Angel Of Portobello. However, a clever army intelligence officer manages to trace the girls and ‘enlists’ them into using future enemy broadcasts to change the course of the war... for the better. Except, while they are doing this, Martha realises that they have erased the future they were so enjoying... including erasing people like David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone and her now favourite director, Stanley Kubrick.

Then things get dark and... that’s all I’m saying about the story itself but, I will say it’s one of the more successful and enjoyable microbudget movies I’ve seen in a while. Very cheap movies usually look just that - cheap and with a tendency to wear the limitations of their budgets on their celluloid sleeves (okay... probably not celluloid these days but, you know what I mean). Partially because of the limited locations and partly because of the format in which the movie is presented, it actually feels a little slicker than it probably could have been and, well, ‘value for money’ it well may be but the movie certainly doesn’t suffer from the limited ingredients juxtaposed with the abundance of ideas.

Let’s get to the lead actresses... they really nail this. The girls have that kind of laid back, almost narcissistic attitude towards life that rich people living without the consequences of their actions sometimes are portrayed as having (especially in films set in the 1930s but made with a more contemporary eye, I’ve found). Emma Appleton especially plays Thomasina as a kind of spoiled brat of a genius who also happens to be wanting to do the right things for the right reasons. Martha is more sympathetic and equally righteous in her motivation and it’s interesting because the whole film is pitched as a message to Thomasina from Martha in the future... which you will know from the start and which, in some ways, spoils the surprise of the ending a little but... it does have a good ending and a terrific punchline in a single photograph. Not quite the final shot of Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining in terms of style but, certainly it should give those who have been following along with the story and thinking things through a window into whether Martha was successful in getting her message... aka this film... through to Thomasina or not.

One really nice sequence makes good use of a song by The Kinks... although, while the title of the film (and the central time viewing machine) may or may not be a nod to The Kinks, the sequence in question very much is. When Thomasina and Martha are at a celebratory dance party in the 1940s, Martha gets up to sing, accompanied by Thomasina on piano, the song You Really Got Me. And the audience at this point (and it’s a great sequence) will learn from the montage, via a stray news item, that ...You Really Got Me becomes ‘The Anthem Of The War’. And that’s partially what the film is... as well as touching briefly on the nature of film and how you manipulate it to tell a story... the film is all about consequences and what happens when you use knowledge of the future to try and avoid the bad bits. It inevitably catches you out and things can end up getting a whole lot worse. Can the past already done be changed somehow, is what this ‘message in a bottle’ of a film actually manages to answer with its final shot. And it’s nicely done, it has to be said.

And not much more to say, I think, about Lola other than, I really enjoyed it and I hope the writers and director (not to mention the crew) get more of a budget to carry on and do something even more spectacular. In some ways, Lola is a stretched out episode of The Twilight Zone in substance... just like a few other modern directors I could name have been doing over the years... but it’s a really successful one and has a style all of its own. Definitely one to catch if you are into the usual scientifiction conundrums done right. Loved it.