This German adrenaline rush is like nothing I've ever experienced before. Franka Potente is fantastic as the hyperkinetic Lola of the title, with crayon-red hair and a cut-off tank top, on a twenty-minute mad dash to find the 100,000 Deutsch marks that will save her boyfriend's life. The sequences of Lola running through Berlin, accompanied by a pulsing electronic soundtrack, would be invigorating enough on their own, but the tension keeps piling up. The film shows terrific visual imagination, with a great title sequence, animation, split screens, and what appears to be videotape photography (the dialogue scenes with Lola's dad and his mistress look like a daytime soap). Combining a challenging examination of the fate that we ourselves create with a fantasy-versus-reality structure and setting the whole thing at lightning speed, it's hard to pick up on all the material in a single viewing. Never conventional and always fascinating, Run Lola Run is an arthouse triumph.
Review of Run Lola Run
