July 27 2025, 21:35

Run Lola Run

Director: Tom Tykwer

Release year: 1998

Lola and Manni are at a relationship crossroads. Manni is trying to make a living doing jobs for a Berlin gangster, Ronnie, and as a test of competence is told to pick up 100,000 DM of diamonds, sell them and bring the money to a rendezvous at midday. He accidentally leaves the bag of cash on a subway train and phones Lola in desperation. She tells him she will fix things, and she’ll meet him with the money he needs—but she only has twenty minutes to somehow make things good.

I saw this in the cinema when it came out and I remember being blown away by the mixture of pulsing techno, Franka Potente running through the streets of Berlin, and the looping narrative. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. I’d forgotten the animation, the philosophical game the film is playing, and the ways character arcs spin in different directions each time Lola’s actions deviate in very small ways.

It’s a beautifully edited film, and it plays with the ideas of free will, destiny, chance, desire and love. Lola’s agency creates the second loop through the timeline, and it’s ambiguous if Lola or Manni create the third, but each time through Lola seems to remember small details from the time before, and her screams at moments of extreme stress certainly bend reality to her will.

The central question of whether the couple can be together is answered when Manni steps up to solve the problem he’s created for himself. There’s an implication from the beginning that he tends to rely on Lola fixing things for him. By the end the lovers are equal.

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