LOLA
Entry updated 3 November 2025. Tagged: Film.
UK/Irish film (2022). Cowtown Pictures, Headgear Films, Kreo Films FZ. Directed by Andrew Legge. Written by Legge and Angeli MacFarlane; story by Henrietta Ashworth, Jessica Ashworth and Legge. Cast includes Emma Appleton, Rory Fleck Byrne, Aaron Monaghan and Stefanie Martini. 79 minutes. Black and white.
An opening caption tells us that in 2021 some reels of film were discovered in a country house in Sussex. What we see is that film. Two sisters, Thom (Appleton) and Mars (Martini) grow up in isolation in the English countryside, and obsessively film each other, thus providing the footage for the film we are watching. Inspired by their dead parents, they invent a device (named LOLA, after their mother) which can broadcast footage from the future (see Time Viewer). At first they use it to tune into performances of pop songs, David Bowie being a particular favourite, but when World War Two breaks out they realize they can use it to find out where bombing raids will take place and supply advance warning to civilians. They operate in secret, until army lieutenant Sebastian Holloway (Byrne) tracks them down and persuades them to allow him to work with them, and supply information to his superior Cobcroft (Monaghan).
All goes well at first, helping turn the tide in Britain's favour, with Cobcroft taking all the public credit, but cracks begin to show in the women's relationship when Mars and Holloway fall in love, and Thom starts to work alone. Mars is horrified when she tries to tune into Bowie and discovers a fascist pop song instead, indicating that they are altering history. Thom's attempts to destroy a flotilla of German U-boats involve sacrificing an American passenger liner, and in retaliation the USA refuses to join the war. Thom and Holloway realize the Germans have discovered their secret when Thom advises Cobcroft to send battleships to Southampton, allowing a full-scale Invasion of Dover. Following these disasters, Cobcroft assumes the sisters to be double agents, and has them arrested.
As they are about to be executed, chaos breaks out as the German invasion reaches London. Holloway and Mars escape and hide out in the countryside, while Thom is released and uses her Invention working for the now ruling Nazi party (Oswald Mosley is Prime Minister), while insisting that she is still trying to achieve peace. When Hitler visits Thom at her lab, Mars breaks in and attempts to assassinate him. She is caught; just as she is about to be hanged Thom rescues her, but is shot and killed in the attempt. Mars escapes and creates the film we have watched, in the desperate hope that a past Thom will see it and abandon work on LOLA, thus reverting history to the path we know. A final caption declaring that no evidence of LOLA was ever found, and a photo of the sisters celebrating VE day, suggest she succeeded.
Shot using pre-war cameras, and seamlessly mixing in archive footage, some of it doctored, this is a remarkably inventive and sprightly film which ranks alongside It Happened Here (1966) as a rare convincing Hitler Wins film, albeit with a few niggling plot holes and a slightly too conventional love story subplot. Despite the brief running time and potentially gimmicky format, serious questions of moral responsibility are given due weight, aided by some clever foreshadowing. The most joyous moment in the film is a performance by the sisters of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" as a wartime swing number, the implications of this song existing over twenty years before it did in the real world hinting at the disappearance of Bowie from the future. His replacement, Reginald Watson, has hits with fascist-themed electro songs, performed by Neil Hannon from the pop group The Divine Comedy, which are another of the film's pleasures, along with the vivacious performances of Appleton and Martini.
The film received the Méliès d'Or award (named in honour of Georges Méliès) for best European fantastic film. [CWa]
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