LOLA is a 2022 Irish-British found footage science fiction film directed by Andrew Legge, starring Emma Appleton and Stefanie Martini. The film is Legge's feature directorial debut.[1][2]
| LOLA | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Andrew Legge |
| Written by | Andrew Legge Angeli Macfarlane |
| Produced by | Alan Maher John Wallace |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Oona Menges |
| Edited by | Colin Campbell |
| Music by | Neil Hannon |
Production company | Cowtown Pictures |
Release date | 5 August 2022 (Locarno Film Festival) |
Running time | 79 minutes |
| Countries | Ireland United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
England, 1941, sisters Thomasina and Martha have created a machine that can intercept broadcasts from the future. This delightful apparatus allows them to explore their inner punk a generation before the movement comes into existence. But with World War II escalating, the sisters decide to use the machine as a weapon of intelligence, with world-altering consequences.
Lola was shot in Ireland during lockdown. The scenes between the sisters in their house were shot on 16mm Bolex and Arriflex cameras with period lenses while the newsreel scenes were shot on a 1930s Newman Sinclair 35mm wind up camera on Kodak Double X film. The actresses were trained in how to use the cameras with Stefanie Martini operating the shots which her character is shooting. Much of the film was home processed using a Soviet era 16mm developing tank. Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy wrote the soundtrack which also features Space Oddity by David Bowie, a rearranged version of You Really Got Me by the Kinks and music by Elgar.[3][4]
The film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival on 5 August 2022.[5][6][7]
David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a rating of "B", writing that "The genius of Legge’s design, and why his debut works as more than just a cute little curio despite its thinness, is that it mines a sneaky emotionality from the bedrock of the film-within-a-film structure."[5] Jennie Kermode of Eye For Film gave the film four and a half stars, writing "Beautifully drawn characters lend a lot of heart to a story which might easily have been told in a more mechanical way, and keep the human factor prominent. Legge doesn’t rely on the changing of the future to shock an audience which has heard that tale many times before, but weaves a more complex story, very neatly tied together and, in its totality, addressing one of science fiction’s trickier big questions." She also praised the soundtrack, "Rounding out all this, and coming into full bloom as we begin to see more of the reshaped future, is some brilliantly rewritten music, exploring how key songs and movements might have turned out in a different cultural context. This provides a strange form of delight as the story grows increasingly dark."[8] Kim Newman also praised the soundtrack "whose sinister dystopian glam rock is horribly convincing" and concluded "this is an ingenious, exhilarating film: it demands rewatches, revels in time-twisting inventiveness and has a lot to say about the actual present day as it contemplates how good intentions might muck up the past".[9]
Fionnuala Halligan of Screen Daily wrote a positive review of the film, stating that it is "conceptually sharp, with wonderful period sound work".[10] Alistair Harkness of The Scotsman rated the film 3 stars out of 5, writing that "it’s neatly done, even if the apparent ubiquity of film stock in 1940s Britain isn’t quite as easily explained away as Thom and Martha’s possession of a light-weight, hand-held, sound-recording camera."[11] Kaleem Aftab of Time Out rated the film 2 stars out of 5, writing that "There’s much to admire here, but with Legge’s keen eye for the technical side of cinema stronger than his narrative impulses, LOLA ultimately has to go down as an ambitious failure."[12]