Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Andrew Legge
Starring: Emma Appleton, Stefanie Martini, Rory Fleck Byrne, Nick Dunning, Hugh
O'Connor
The recent Danny Boyle comedy
Yesterday
supposed a world in which everyone but an opportunistic singer-songwriter
has forgotten The Beatles ever existed. Boyle's film tries to convince us
that if The Beatles' back catalogue suddenly appeared to our fresh ears we'd
all instantly fall in love with their songs. Of course, the real world
evidence suggests this wouldn't remotely be the case. Everyone starts out
having no idea of The Beatles' existence until some day they happen to be
exposed to one of their classic songs on the radio or in a commercial or on
a movie soundtrack. How many people rush out and buy a Beatles album after
such an experience? Practically none, because as sad as it seems, The
Beatles are old hat, and save for a few nostalgically inclined folk, people
just aren't interested in old things. If young people in the 1940s however
had suddenly been exposed to The Beatles they probably would have reacted
the way the 21st century characters of Yesterday do, because
they'd be discovering something fresh and revolutionary, like the 1950s kids
hearing Marty McFly cover Chuck Berry.
With Lola, director Andrew Legge does for The Kinks what Boyle failed to do
for The Beatles. In a key scene that owes a debt to the aforementioned
Back to the Future set-piece, a young woman in 1941 England
breaks into a cover of 'You Really Got Me,' which immediately becomes not
just a wartime anthem, but a slogan.
The film is centred around two sisters - Martha (Emma Appleton) and
Thomasina (Lily James lookalike Stefanie Martini) - who follow their
late inventor father's lead in developing a device that can receive
broadcast signals from as far ahead in the future as the early 1970s.
Presumably inspired by exposure to The Kinks' song of the same name, they
name their invention "Lola."
The film opens with a piece of text that tells us what we are about to see
is a film found in the cellar of a home in Sussex, which purports to have
been shot and edited in 1941. Through the footage, which features a
voiceover by Martha, the ostensible director, we watch as the sisters
initially use their device for entertainment, falling in love with the music
of the 1960s and adopting the Bowie-inspired nicknames of "Mars" and "Thom."
Seemingly inspired by the BBC's Delia Derbyshire, Thom becomes a synth
wizard, aided by a cracking electronic score by Neil Hannon, and also
spouts bra-burning era feminist jargon that flies over the head of the men
of 1941. Like anyone with access to future information, the sisters use
their knowledge to win at the horses. But of course, this is 1941, and with
their country under siege by the Luftwaffe, they decide to put their machine
to use in the war effort, sending out warnings of incoming bombing
raids.
This attracts the attention of the military, with the girls rumbled by
a Lieutenant Sebastien Holloway (Rory Fleck Byrne). Working with
the girls and keeping their identity a secret, Holloway expands the military
use of the machine, using it to take the fight to the Nazis. While Martha
falls for Holloway, Thomasina takes increasingly great risks in her war
against Gerry. Out of her depth, she begins to cause more harm than good,
altering the course of the war in Nazi Germany's favour, along with ending
the career of Bowie before it begins.
Shot in black and white, mostly with equipment of the era operated largely
by the two lead actresses, Lola often takes on the appearance
of one of Peter Watkins' innovative fake documentaries of the 1960s. We're
required to adopt a suspension of disbelief regarding the sisters'
documenting so much footage in the manner of the news crew capturing footage
from an English civil war battlefield in Culloden, while manipulated footage that imagines Nazi ships sailing up the Thames
and shelling Parliament have the striking verisimilitude of Watkins' footage
of a post-nuclear attack England in the once-banned
The War Game.
Lola adopts a far lighter tone than Watkins' disturbing
works, but it proffers a similar message about how easily civilisation can
fall apart while we're distracted by entertainment and comfort. At one point
Martha wonders if it's worth saving lives in 1941 if it means we lose the
great music that would emerge in the UK in the 1960s, with Bowie replaced by
a broadcast of a singer who comes off as a parody of New Wave acts like
Sparks and Yello. These glimpses of a dire musical landscape constitute the
film's one misstep - they're so broadly performed that they have the effect
of taking you out of the otherwise engaging central sci-fi thriller
plot.
And engaging it is. Legge has done a wonderful job with limited means,
reinvigorating the played-out found footage genre by looking past
The Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity to the
films of Watkins, which despite what fans of
Cannibal Holocaust would have you believe, mark the real
beginnings of the sub-genre. Keeping the audience from asking why the
characters are still filming is a tricky one for the found footage
filmmaker, but it's something I never found myself pondering at any point in
Lola.
Lola is on UK/ROI VOD now.
