Starring Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu and Herbert Knaup
Germany, 1998, 80 mins
Release Date: September 9th 1999
Flirt plus Sliding Doors plus MTV plus "Choose Your Own Adventure" plus technicolor. Run, Lola, Run is a very lively film about time, chance, coincidence, 'what-if' and running. Uh, no, it's not really about running, but Lola has to run in her twenty minutes to get 100,000 DM to save her boyfriend. Constantly exposed to fat funky house/ techno beats in this flick, I would rather watch this standing up, yes, no chairs, with the volume cranked up, a mirrorball at the ceiling and a bar at the back of the room. A dancefloor, if you don't get it (not to insult your intelligence or hipness quotient, but I noticed there are plenty of age 50-plus viewers among the audience). No glowsticks, thanks, there is enough visual stimulation already from the bright colours of a telephone booth, a mini-ambulance and Lola's Ronald McDonald, fire-engine-red hair (garish? oh, it's probably just my aversion to bright colours...). This film is so MTV that when there is cartoon Lola on television running down a la Vertigo stairs I just expect her to bump into a wall with a huge MTV logo on it. Full colour, of course.
OK, so Run, Lola, Run is cool and may even make a lot of money if the mainstream cinemas get to play it - I swear the teens will love it!! - but I wonder if this movie will be unhip and out of date several years from now. Who knows, probably finally grey and charcoal will be the universal colour, or goth chic fashion gets out of control... ooh! lots of noir! cool!
natalia laban eugene chew thinks Run Lola Run offers an interesting example of film's convergence with interactive video-games. check out his review. 
At a glance, I thought the film was trying hard to be hip, but considering the electronic soundtrack was composed by the director and his band (nice soundtrack Tom!), it's less a poser, more of a scenester. There are many twists added into the film, with variations on a theme, and flashcard futures of passer-bys on the street. This film has its moments, like when Lola and Manni, her boyfriend, flee the supermarket in a slow-mo and Dinah Washington's "What Difference Can a Day Make" starts to play.. one second.. two second..
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adam rivett disagrees, calling the film "boring, desperately hip and almost completely devoid of content or point." find out why.
return to 1999 Sydney Film Festival index