Andrew Legge
In UK and US cinemas now
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TWO sisters, orphans, play among the leavings of their parents鈥� experiments in radio. By 1938, the one who is a genius, Thomasina, or Thom (Emma Appleton), is listening to David Bowie鈥檚 Space Oddity on a ceiling-high TV set that can tune in to the future.
The politics of the day being what it is, Thom鈥檚 sister Martha, or Mars (Stefanie Martini), decides this invention 鈥� LOLA, after their dead mother 鈥� can鈥檛 remain their plaything. It belongs to the world.
With the help of Sebastian (Rory Fleck Byrne), a sympathetic army officer with whom Mars falls in love, they are soon working with British intelligence to fox Nazi operations a day before they happen. Drunk on success, Thom lets ambition get the better of her and starts sacrificing the civilians of tomorrow in order to draw out the Wehrmacht. When a horrified President Roosevelt catches wind of this, it spells the end of Winston Churchill鈥檚 efforts to draw the US into the war against Hitler.
Good intentions, ambitious plans and unintended consequences usher the world into hell in this often stunning piece of micro-budget science fiction. As high-concept movie ideas go, LOLA鈥荣 counterfactual 20th-century history is up there with Memento and Primer.
There is a 鈥渂ut鈥� hovering here. For some reason, director and co-writer Andrew Legge seems neither to have finished the script, nor given his actors much directorial guidance. LOLA is more a short story narrated to a visual accompaniment than a fully fledged film. Thom and Mars are supposed to be 1930s women transfigured by their access to glimpses of 1960s pop culture, but it is impossible not to see them for what they are, personable young actors from the 2020s let loose to do their thing.
This makes LOLA a good movie, rather than a great one 鈥� and that is a shame. Some extra script work and a spot of voice coaching would have hardly added much to LOLA鈥荣 tight budget. Legge made The Chronoscope in 2009, a 20-minute foray into the same territory 鈥� peering into the future, again from the 1930s. LOLA is more solemn in tone, but no more serious in its themes, as though Legge were intimidated by the possibilities offered by the feature format.
Elsewhere, the film鈥檚 resources are deployed with flair and ingenuity. LOLA is a highly convincing assembly of found footage and home movies. Famous period radio broadcasts are repurposed to chilling effect. The manipulations of newsreel footage are fairly crude technically, but I defy you not to gasp at the sight of Nazi invaders waving their swastikas over a bombed-out London or Adolf Hitler being driven in state down The Mall. And Neil Hannon (the maverick talent behind band The Divine Comedy) has an indecent amount of fun cooking up the beats of a counterfactual fascist Top 10.
These days, British and Irish film-makers face stark choices: do you make your movie as quickly as possible, on the lowest budget, get it seen and generate interest? Or spend years in development hell, working with overseas production companies that don鈥檛 know if they can trust you, and, with many millions of dollars on the line, are likely to homogenise your project out of recognition?
I wish this film had impressed me less and involved me more. But in a business this precarious, Legge鈥檚 choices make sense, and LOLA is an effective and enjoyable calling card.
Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer. Follow him on Instagram at @simon_ings
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