Starring Emma Appleton, Stefanie Martini

Directed by Andrew Legge

Signature Entertainment, in cinemas now

In the 1940s, two sisters invent a machine that can intercept broadcasts from the future and change the course of World War Two with disastrous consequences.

Surely anyone who has seen Back to the Future, Twelve Monkeys, Source Code, Edge of Tomorrow and a hundred other movies and TV series (most notably the Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever) knows by now that the one thing that should never be interfered with is the space-time continuum, because when you do, it’s a bugger to fix.

To be fair to Thomasina (‘Tom’) and Martha (‘Mars’) Hanbury, the two protagonists of Andrew Legge’s energetic and intriguing time-loop drama, Lola, it is still only 1941 and none of these movies have been made yet. While there’s nothing particularly surprising about Legge’s story – in which knowledge of the future changes the course of the war, but by doing so, a well-intentioned attempt to defeat Nazism takes a far darker turn – the execution of it is startling, making Lola one of the most memorable releases of the year.

Legge tells the Hanburys’ story through ‘found footage’, which, despite being another genre that has, perhaps, had its day, is employed here to riveting effect. Martha ‘Mars’ Hanbury (I won’t spoil the delicious reason for the sisters’ nicknames) has compiled a seemingly chaotic mélange of home movies, film diary, offcuts and newsreels in an attempt to warn her sibling from the future, as to the folly of their enterprise. To start with, it’s a challenging watch. The use of montage is so fragmentary as to be alienating, but it soon weaves into a remarkably coherent piece of story-telling. And yes, we’re familiar with this kind of narrative, but Legge draws some original conclusions as to the political ramifications for anyone who believes they can control their own destiny.

Technically, Lola is something of a masterclass. The faked and/or reconstructed newsreel is brilliantly effective and witty. Taking his cue from Spielberg (who used a lower grade format for the non VFX sections in Close Encounters so that we wouldn’t see the join when the more processed trickery kicked in) the scripted, dramatic footage is shot on period kit and purposefully degraded that so that it doesn’t jar with authentic 1940s period stock.

Lola is a treat for the cine-literate filmgoer, paying particular homage to Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Molio’s largely forgotten Nazi counter-factual, It Happened Here. If you haven’t seen It Happened Here, search it out and, even better, read up on how they made it. It would make a brilliant double bill with Lola. There’s also a witty nod to Stanley Kubrick, although I was surprised that Legge hadn’t picked up on David Bowie’s flirtation with Nazism in the 1970s, which could have made for a particularly ironic touch given the film’s subplots.

Verdict: At just 79 minutes, Lola cracks along and never lets you go. It may be something of a narrative ‘old dog’ but Andrew Legge has taught it some terrific new tricks and it’s well worth catching. 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com