I am closing out this month of writing on retro cinematic aesthetics with Andrew Legge’s Lola (2022), a movie that has similarities to a number of films already covered, while also shining through as a well composed, singular piece of art. Like Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) and La Antena (2007), Lola uses the trope of the mad scientist, but presents it in a new way. Instead of aligning this idea with fearsome antagonists, the technological savants are two young women, Thomasina (Emma Appleton) and Martha (Stefanie Martini). In addition to creating a machine that can intercept transmissions from the future, they are seen operating motion picture and audio technology, which has a metatextual reference to the film itself. The texture of the film grain, sprocket holes, slow/fast motion, jump cuts, stop motion effects, and 4:3 aspect ratio provide a fetishistic love of celluloid filmmaking practices, while also doing something that many films of this kind fail to do--justify this style in the diegesis of the movie.
The year is 1938 and the two sisters have just finished developing LOLA, their prophetic, technological device. Thomasina is the more obsessive and scientific of the two, whereas Martha (aka Mars) is the more sensual and artistic one. They begin to forecast the horrors of World War II that grip Europe a few years into the future, realizing that they have the power to change it by conveying that information to the British military under the codename “The Angel of Portobello”. Sebastian (Rory Fleck Byrne), a military Lieutenant, tracks their signals and imposes himself upon the sisters and Lola. Although Mars soon falls in love with him, his presence leads to a military intervention in Lola’s powers, which is a clear sign of patriarchal control. Soon after, Mars and Thomasina realize that their actions have changed the course of the future in unpredictable ways. Their discovery of David Bowie and his music, thirty years before the fact, becomes a memory unto itself. Bowie is replaced by Reginald Watson, a fascist synth pop idol who is made possible by Hitler’s inadvertent takeover of The United Kingdom. Although starting out with the best and most brilliant of intentions, the sisters realize that they were instrumental in the fascist takeover, and they are subsequently scapegoated. Will Mars and Thom eventually be able to turn back the dark forebodings of this malleable present and future?
Lola has the elements of a time travel science fiction story, although no characters actually travel through time. They are simply able to alter the future, bringing light to infinite new variables. The movie concentrates on technology, once again evoking an allegorical likeness between media and innovations from the past with that of today. Legge’s film succeeds in an area where La Antena and Whisperer in Darkness (2011) do not. The beautiful grain of the cinematography, some of which was shot on a 16mm Bolex, lets us know within five minutes of the start that we won’t have to worry about intrusive digital approaches to telling the story (this is not to say that there were less apparent digital interventions during the making). Yet the films do have similarities. The technology of Lola intercepts communication in ways that can be used politically, much like the machines of Mr TV and his scientist in La Antena, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. The premise of greater workings that affect the world in a way that destroys the conventions of time and space sounds a lot like Lovecraftian stories such as The Whisperer in Darkness. Like those two films, Lola also has a scene involving audio playback via wax cylinder, which has been used time and again now as a retro-technological fetish object. The look of the actual device called Lola is reminiscent of the lighthouse-like contraption in Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! which transmits signals to The Aerophone. Aside from the preoccupation with technology, other aspects of Lola resemble the films I have covered up until this point. Thomasina’s soft butch style resembles the titular Wild Boys (2018) found in Bertrand Mandico’s retro fantasy, as well as Valeria Bertucelli’s gender fluid role as The Son of Mr TV in La Antena.
One of my greatest pet peeves in cinema is the use of anachronistic music in a period piece. I remember immediately turning off Moulin Rouge (2001) when it used “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a scene. Another example is Sophia Coppola’s use of contemporary music like Souxsie and The Banshees in Marie Antoinette (2006), which grated on my nerves the whole picture. Surprisingly, Lola is possibly the first movie I’ve seen to do this kind of musical time travel successfully, in part because there is a logical reason for it in the plot. Early on we hear David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, which indicates that the sister’s device is working correctly. The line “Ground control to Major Tom” actually works thematically, in that they are seeking transmissions from far off. When Mars can’t locate the song where it should be in time, it marks the halfway point of Lola, when they realize they no longer have control of their machine and what it can do. In response to this, Bowie disappears forever, replaced by Reginald Watson and his Fascist synth pop “The Sound of Marching Feet” (“If your friends don’t sing along, call the police.”) This entirely new, fictional persona was created for the film in response to Bowie’s ubiquity in our culture. Instead of just exploiting songs from the pop cultural ethos like Baz Luhrmann and Sophia Coppola did in the abovementioned movies, Lola uses Bowie and a few other tunes in a more complex way, advancing the plot and saying something about how pop music resonates with people. It shows the thought put into a time bending story that could otherwise have relied on simple tropes.
Regarding these tropes, it is worth mentioning that time travel or anachronistic storytelling specifically involving Nazis does seem to be a stock sub-plot by now. We have seen it in the Netflix series adapted from Philip K Dick’s Man in The High Castle (2015-2019), and in another way entirely in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). It is common to see Nazis posed in our culture as the purveyors of ultimate evil and destruction, although this trope is heavy handed by now. One problem with its usage is that we live in a time when millions of people in the US, UK and beyond seem to have no concrete idea of who the Nazis actually were, and of the simultaneously brutal and banal aspects of their crimes. It has become common for a layperson to just say that anyone they don’t agree with is a Nazi, which if you stop to think about it, is extremely offensive to the victims of The Third Reich, and to a lesser extent, people who actually are aware of European history. But where Tarantino is indulging in simplistic fantasies with his “wouldn’t it be cool if…” escapism, Legge dares to show the audience that even those of us who have the best intentions could end up contributing to the problem. Thomasina has a certain righteousness of purpose which, due to the unexpected results of altering time, turns into a traumatic emptiness by the end. Science and technology have so much potential for good, but if used unchecked by those who are naive and/or mad with power, they have the potential to destabilize the laws of time and space in chaotic ways.