Run Lola Run Review
by Jerry Saravia (faust667 AT aol DOT com)August 9th, 1999
German director Tom Tykwer's "Run Lola Run" is the first truly great pop fantasy since Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," a high-octane, bizarrely moving, sensual, energetic film of such distinct purity that it is impossible to put it out of your mind.
The film stars Franka Potente as Lola, a flaming red-haired drug dealer's girlfriend whose life always seems to be on the go. Within the first couple of minutes, Lola is engaged in a frantic search for 100,000 marks to save her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) from getting killed by gangsters. It is money that Manni owes to a gangster but he inadvertenly left it in a subway, where it might have gotten in the hands of a homeless person! Lola has precisely twenty minutes to come up with the money. She tries to consult her father, who works as an executive at a bank, and he may or may not be of any help to her. In the meantime, Manni considers robbing a supermarket, which is a post-Tarantino cliche to be sure ...but writer-director Tykwer has some sly tricks up his sleeve.
"Run Lola Run" is not content with all things formal and conventional, and so in a shrewd move, the 20-minute event is repeated twice. What? How can this be interesting? Well, instead of just merely repeating the timely events at random as "Pulp Fiction," "Go" and the noir classic "The Killing" did, we get different outcomes, realizations, and coincidences with each interval. Tykwer operates under the theory that Lola imagines there are alternating time lines, and likewise, so does Manni. In a sense, it closely resembles "Groundhog Day"...avoiding the same problems and sidestepping others each time the desperate Lola runs trying to find the inordinate sum of money.
"Run Lola Run" has plenty of visual tricks and superbly crafted camera moves in every frame, and plenty of surprises along its festive way. We get the homeless man who becomes a major character in one event, Lola (who does enough running to qualify for the Olympics) always managing to run past a group of nuns, and there are the people on the street she almost runs into. Each time Lola marches past them, a different life is mapped out shown in unobtrusive flash cuts. There is Manni's decision to rob a supermarket if Lola does not make it on time, though something always manages to occur to intrude upon that possibility. So we get car accidents, animated intervals of Lola running, banks held up, fierce dogs, astonished casino gamblers, shootings, lifelong decisions involving parentage, bicyclists trying to pitch bike sales, and plenty of heart-pumping songs and sounds to emphasize Lola's fervent task at hand. Each timely event is played out with unpredictable twists and at the end, there is a greater sense of optimism that supersedes that of "Go."
Franka Ponette is a startlingly alive newcomer, brimming with a substance and energy unseen in cinema screens this year. Her flame-red hairdo has already inspired may German girls - even the title has proved inspiring for Hillary Clinton's race for senator. She has sweet, delectable chemistry with the soft-spoken Moritz Bleibtreu - their bedroom chats highlighted by bright red hues is as touching and heartrending as any Julia Roberts romance. Those scenes comfortably reminded me of some of the flashing red color flashes at the beginning of Bertolucci's "The Conformist."
>From the incredible overhead shot where a crowd forms the title of the film, "Run Lola Run" is a masterpiece of cinematic invention and circumstance - actively playing the audience like a piano. It is indeed the most pleasurable pop film of the year. And Ponette is the shining moral force of the film - in her desperation and her surefire confidence, she makes us believe there are alternatives to any life-threatening event. Bravo, Lola, Bravo!
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