Cast: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu

Director: Tom Tykwer

Screenplay: Tom Tykwer

Genre: German Film/Romance/Thriller

Running time: 1 hr 21 mins



CRITIQUE:


By the time you’ve heard the title of this German film, you’re probably familiar of what it’s all about. We get a ladette, an energetically athletic, running in countless of momentous scenes. And no, this is not that sort of romantic comedy where there’s usually the run-to-the-airport-or-bus-station climax. There’s just the running, loads of it – and the twist of it, the heroine runs to save the love of her life.


Told in a very inventive style, director Tom Tykwer offers European aura to this film, accompanied with beating, blaring club-techno soundtrack. Unexpectedly, it works on the scenario. Red-haired Lola has twenty minutes to dash like a racehorse, saving her lover from a would-be disaster after a drug-deal-gone-wrong matter. Along the way, she encounters different hurdles that try to stop her from arriving on time. People looking for a generous script would be quite displeased, but audience who are open-minded enough to bask in this arthouse physical and emotional exercise, then you’re in the right kind of alley. Tykwer could almost turn a blind eye from the strict rules of filmmaking, and instead, he usurps his own twist, as one long action sequence (from Lola scampering at his apartment to leaping across pavements and bumping people, cue Polaroid-snapshot cinematography) is repeated three times to tell three different angles of the story. If you want sense and serenity, douse your lights and off to kip instead.


But at the core of this film is an engaging love story between two consumed people, scared of the incontrovertibility of life and the dooms it offer. Yet despite of this, with Lola’s inspiring determination, she runs for the name of love, along the way discovering about her family, and to whom she really lives for, realising that luck plays a tremendous part in the game of life. As said at the beginning of the film, human beings are the most mysterious creatures, time is their greatest enemy. There’s depth in this, added with adrenaline rush and a strong central performance by Franka Potente.


VERDICT:

A visual exercise of a filmmaking muscle nevertheless invigorating in style, RUN LOLA RUN does what it is ought to do. It’s punked-up, exasperating and surprisingly human.



RATING: B+