LOLA
As children they played, not with toys but with electronics, Martha and Thomasina Hanbury, one the designer the other the engineer who built her sister’s inventions, the greatest of which they named LOLA. Conceived as a diversion, an entertainment which allowed them to peer into the future, it was not until 1941 when the Blitz came to London that they realised the possibilities of their creation.
Listening to as-yet-unbroadcast news reports they were able to anonymously send warnings to the districts of London with precise information on the areas to be evacuated; the voice from the ether dubbed “the Angel of Portobello,” it was inevitable they would be tracked by the military, Lieutenant Sebastian Holloway assigned to oversee the project and fulfil a greater potential, intercepting and analysing reports on enemy movements, allowing campaigns to be anticipated and defeated with minimal strategic losses.
Written by Andrew Legge from a script co-written with Angeli Macfarlane, Stefanie Martini and Emma Appleton are Martha and Thomasina, the sisters who change the course of the war in LOLA but in doing so send unanticipated ripples forward, the future they have already observed no longer the one they are headed for, tuning in to listen to their beloved David Bowie performing his number one single only to hear an unfamiliar anthem.
An alternate history which blends The Man in the High Castle with Millennium, history pushing back with increasing ferocity the further it is diverted, Thom is the practical one, seeing only the numbers and how they balance, how many lives have been saved versus those expended in the effort, whereas with Sebastian (Rory Fleck Byrne) at her side Mars sees the human cost in what they are doing.
Presented as found footage, round-cornered square-formatted grainy monochrome pulled from the cellar of an abandoned country home, the modest production uses minimal cast and locations but supplements it with extensive archive footage judiciously adapted and spliced in to expand the scope of a story which treads the line between the compelling desire to make a difference, the joy and catharsis of knowing something terrible has been averted, and the nagging dread that the wrong touch will make the delicate house of cards collapse.
Martini and Appleton both superb in their roles, believable as sisters once synchronous in thought slowly pushed to different outlooks, there is perhaps a single step beyond the boundaries of the format as Mars and Thom bring a jazz nightclub to its feet, the sound quality pushing past the modest equipment of the period as the band join in their rousing improvisation, but it is a moment of celebration which LOLA has earned; like Freaks Out, seeing the Third Reich thrashed never goes out of style.
Edinburgh International Film Festival concluded on Saturday 20th August but will return in 2022
