Run Lola Run

Tom Tykwer never settles the film into one texture: 35mm colour, black and white film, video and animation sit side by side, held by the rhythm of editor Mathilde Bonnefoy. Each time Lola sets off, a neighbour’s television plays a cartoon of a Lola like girl on an endless spiral of stairs. The real idea sits beside the run. When Lola brushes past a stranger, a few seconds of accelerated stills show that person’s later life, and each attempt flings the same person somewhere else entirely. The arithmetic is in the open too: on the third pass Lola puts her last 100 marks or so on number 20 at roulette twice running, wins both times, and leaves with close to 130,000 marks, so her 20 minute deadline lands on the table too. Berlin plays itself: the bank is the former Dresdner Bank on Bebelplatz, the casino the foyer of Rathaus Schöneberg. Tykwer wrote the music with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil; Franka Potente sings on it. It was named best film at the 1999 German Film Awards. A good fit if you look for the argument less in the running than in the seconds long photo bursts about passers by. Not for anyone put off by the same scenes rebuilt three times, with the characters left thin underneath.