Lola

 I went to see Andrew Legge's film "Lola" on my own at QFT on Saturday. I didn't even try to get anyone to come with me as, on paper, it's a hard sell: a black and white, found footage film, made during the lock-down, about two sisters who invent a time machine that allows them to watch David Bowie videos at the outset of the Second World War. Oh, and they're named Thom and Mars. You can sort of see where this going...

I think I loved the film. It's too long - all films are too long - and it's oddly static. It could work as well as a play. But the premise is great, reminiscent of the obscure Angus McKie comic strip "Wurthum View 2000". Here, Thomasina invents a machine that can view and record broadcasts from up to thirty years in the future. She and her sister, Martha, are orphans, living in a dilapidated mansion in the Sussex countryside (actually rural Ireland). So far, so "Misty" comic. They attempt to affect the outcome of the nascent war, looking into the future and finding out where the Blitz bombs will fall, and issuing warnings as "The Angel of Portobello". 

The military soon track them down, meaning romance for sister Mars, while Thom is tasked with winning the war, something she becomes recklessly obsessed with. At first everything goes well, but an iffy strategic decision proves disastrous and the tide of the war turns against the plucky Brits. Their experiments have consequences until one day, tuning into a favourite broadcast of David Bowie on Top of the Pops, reveals no sign of the Starman. Instead what appears, bestriding the pop charts, is Reginald Watson, with the Nazi-Glam literal foot-stomper "The Sound of Marching Feet".   

I'm kind of amazed by this film. Having dipped my toe into the world of film making, I can't quite believe this genuine oddity exists. People would have had to sign off money for it. It's made in Ireland with Irish money but the leads are English and Ireland plays no part in the story. That's unusual for an Irish film. All the Irish cast do good English accents, which is almost unheard of. Director Andrew Legge has managed to make a competitive and clever black and white film about time travel. I'm in actual awe at that achievement. He must be an absolute baller at the pitching stage. 

The music, by Neil Hannon, is not great, sadly. I'd not heard of anyone involved in this film going in, but I knew and liked Hannon's work, so that was my entry point. But the glam pastiches never quite land, they're too knowing, too inauthentic, too eighties for the period they're supposedly addressing. You could say that time is fracturing, so who can tell what pop music in a Nazi superstate would sound like in 1970. Schlager, probably. But not comic new wave ditties about jackboots. It cheapens the endeavor. 

The film has a conceit - not exactly a twist - but a central idea, introduced at the beginning and reiterated at the end (spoiler) that the entire film has been curated by Mars in an attempt to convince Thom to stop her experiments with changing the future. It's simple and it really works. The Zelig-like doctoring of historical documentary footage is patchy but charming - charm and character are undervalued qualities in modern film - and this film has tons of both. Both leads are fantastic, Emma Appleton as Thom is both Bright Young Thing and Mad Scientist from a Fritz Lang film, all wounded eyes and Hitler hair. Stephanie Martini as Mars actually filmed her own POV footage on a Bolex camera, and this works beautifully within the scuffed and fuzzy footage. The editing on this film is a triumph, at times the super-imposition of thick, impasto imagery is nigh on Cubist, and yet somehow clear, perfectly telling the stories. It's beautifully designed. 

If the dialogue induces the occasional cringe ("You've been made an honorary major, Tom!" etc) it barely matters in a film that cleaves so close to my own sensibilities: the twin female protagonists, the mid-twentieth century setting, the frowsy, dogeared black and white, the two orphans living in a mansion, which owes as much to Misty comic as Jean Rollin or Jose Larraz, the What If scenario, the nods to La Jettee and TimeCrimes, even the idea of an alternative, evil Glam Rock. (Bowie's own flirtation with Fascism - The Thin White Duke - is never touched on, oddly). I love it all. 

I'm concerned. It's almost as if Andrew Legge is a parallel universe version of me, crowing about what I should have done, if only I had the brass balls to do it. 

Very well: truth accepted.