An Irish-British B&W retro sci-fi “found-footage” time-travel yarn, shot entirely during the pandemic lockdowns, Andrew Legge‘s delightful debut LOLA (2022) is a stylish and perfectly-formed cinematic coup, with a genius archival mix of film stock, processing & lenses (cleverly beefing up the production value) — a zany and witty Gen Z fantasy of saving-the-world, while elegantly sipping wine in chichi period clothes, in a fashionably derelict mansion, talking postmodern ideological platitudes, until the darkness seeps in.
Its charming and mildly annoying protagonists are twentysomething sisters, orphaned landed gentry, Thomasina (Emma Appleton) and Martha Hanbury (Stefanie Martini), who call themselves Thom and Mars, and whom the director apparently modelled on the Mitford sisters. The latter, a dreamy creative, and the former, a tomboyish child prodigy, who concocts a steampunk(ish) time-machine they name LOLA, after their deceased mom, and which they use to intercept radio and TV signals from the future, first tuning into a Bowie performance (blasting ground control to major Tom), then discovering the US civil rights movement, the Moon landings, feminism, early 80s fashion, hipster lingo, as well as, of course, The Kinks — all the while solving their financial woes by betting on winning horses.
However, their lovely machine had been birthed right on the eve of WW2 and, as the kids say, LOLA could not longer be just theirs, the world needed her — so they decide to secretly send out radio warnings of imminent Luftwaffe bombardments, ones that went under the radar, amplifying their messaging through gas grids (copper wiring!), and managing to remain undetected by the authorities. At least for a while. They are saving lives, as people flee their homes in time, and thus earn the monicker the Angel of Portobello, as that was one of the first neighbourhoods LOLA had saved.
Inevitably, the duo firmly secures the interest of British military intelligence services, who track them down, and there begins an emotionally fiery collaboration with one young officer, Lieutenant Sebastien Holloway (Rory Fleck Byrne), all of which proceeds to change much of the outcome of WW2 — in ways that are initially exhilarating, but which end up being terrifying.
In a nutshell, instead of keeping the Nazis away from British shores, the allure of their sure-fire predictions allows for a full ground invasion from the Third Reich, and the sisters are proclaimed traitors by their own.
On a lesser scale, but in sync with the general foreboding, their meddling with the sequence of events also manages to entirely sabotage the future of art (primarily, music), as changing the details of history also entails changing its entire picture. This aided by the mediocrity of an authoritarian mindset overrunning all creative impulse.
So, instead of Bowie on TV in 1973, they tune into Reginald, who really digs the rhythm of goose-step.
The brilliant Thomasina, convinced that the end justifies the means, falls under the fascists’ spell, while the much more down-to-earth and intuitive Martha escapes the gallows saved by her intelligence man, and is now fighting the occupying forces from deep underground.
The “found footage” from their abandoned Sussex mansion tells the story Martha broadcasts in the early 1940s, after a series of tragedies — which she edits from the scraps of film she has: news reels, private archives, fly-on-the-wall footage of LOLA in action, and back-from-the-future snippets from their beloved machine — all for Thomasina to intercept in time, in one of the possible parallel universes, and perhaps persuade her to change course.
A cinema enthusiast, Martha somehow documents everything they do, and apparently everyone else around them also manages to document everything they do. Making LOLA, the film, (un)ironically, an ultimate Gen Z fantasy of a highly dystopian future — a benevolent panopticon.
Which, frankly, intentionally or unintentionally, serves as a stark recommendation for amor fati, letting one’s fate unfold, and appreciating it — as any dark alternate history is always just a few precognitive blunders away from an imperfect present.
Still, the film we eventually do see, Martha’s edit, manages to cheerfully downplay its messy philosophy and narrative bumps with a sly self-deprecating wit, oodles of sass, and entirely endearing smart-ass sweetness, not to mention the excellent soundtrack from The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon — inviting its audience to take part in the multiple charades and suspensions-of-disbelief, in a very Wes Anderson (or indeed Zelig) way, and helps us forget all the bits that grate or don’t make sense.
LOLA might also become a go-to film for budding filmmakers to take notes from — on how to intelligently use its budget’s weakness as the story’s core strength, turning the proverbial burden of filming costs into the alchemical gold of quality cinema.
★★★★☆
Author: ©Milana Vujkov
Lola On Film 