# Lola rennt (1998)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

    RUN LOLA RUN (LOLA RENNT)
    (Sony Classics)
    Starring:  Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Armin Rhode,
    Joachim Krol, Nina Petri.
    Screenplay:  Tom Tykwer.
    Producer:  Stefan Arndt.
    Director:  Tom Tykwer.
    MPAA Rating:  R (violence, adult themes)
    Running Time:  81 minutes.
    Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

Tom Tykwer's RUN LOLA RUN is pure cinema at its most maddening and invigorating. Few films this year will leave viewers as charged from experiencing the film medium in the hands of someone who knows how to use it; few films this year pack so much reckless energy into a tight 81 minutes. And few films this year not directed by George Lucas will put more effort into telling a tale about people who don't really matter as characters. RUN LOLA RUN is a giddy exercise in overkill combining splendid bursts of audacity with a largely "who cares" narrative.

The story opens with an 11:40 a.m. call to Lola (Franka Potente) from her luckless boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), a smuggler's courier, about an impending crisis. It seems that Manni left 100,000 marks of his boss's money in a bag on the metro, a problem he has little time to solve. If Manni and money are not at the designated pickup spot at noon sharp the same day, Manni is almost certainly a dead man. That leaves Lola twenty minutes to track down the cash from her wealthy banker father (Herbert Knaup), twenty minutes which could end any number of ways depending on the slightest caprice of chance -- a stumble on the stairs here, a moment's hesitation there.

The crux of Tykwer's premise is showing us three alternate fates for Lola and Manni based on those caprices of chance. It's a gimmick that allows him to turn a short film into a feature, but it works better than you have any reason to expect. Each segment comes with at least one surprising twist, the kind of detail that shows Tykwer's rare talent for being ingenious without being self-congratulatory about his ingenuity. The most surprising twist of all may be the welcome flippancy in his gloss on the usually heavy topics of fate and chance. His best-executed running gag involves staccato, freeze-frame asides in each segment showing how Lola's encounters with complete strangers -- changed by a matter of seconds in each variation -- change those peripheral lives as well. Tykwer uses his marginalia better than many filmmakers use the entire page.

Often, however, it's all just a bit...much. The collisons of animation, video, still images and film seem to exist as much because they can as for any practical reason; surrealist touches like Lola's ability to shatter glass with a scream are more befuddling distraction than artistic nuance. All the busy-ness of Tykwer's business does an effective job of distracting from just how emotionally weightless it all is. The quiet interpersonal moments between Lola and Manni, inserted between the alternate reality segments, should have been striking for the insight they provide. Instead, they're striking because they're about the only chance you have to catch your breath.

Still, it's hard to resist a film that maintains such a relentless pace and squeezes so much pleasure from such a simple concept. It's also hard to resist the charisma of Franka Potente, the wild-eyed star whose furiously pumping legs fuel RUN LOLA RUN. If there had been the hint of a person behind that personality, RUN LOLA RUN could have been sheer brilliance. Even without that strong human story, it's still the sort of action-packed crowd-pleaser that makes so many blockbusters look so sadly bloated. The sheer momentum of Tykwer's techno-pop-pulsing direction makes the film an entertaining jolt to the system, even if it's all ultimately auteurist eye candy.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 running narratives:  7.

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