Lola
Inventive low-budget science fiction film about two sisters who use a home-made machine to influence the course of World War II.
Andrew Legge’s debut feature – Ireland's best-kept film secret – is set in London, in 1941. The city is suffering from the ‘Blitzkrieg’ bombings by Hitler’s army. Thomasina (Thom) and Martha (Mars) are worried: what if the Nazis win? In response, the two talented sisters build a machine that allows them to receive radio and TV broadcasts from the future. They call the time travel machine ‘Lola’. Soon David Bowie, the Stones, the Kinks and various punk groups are dancing across the screen, the sisters dancing along to revolutionary music yet to be made, an anachronistic wartime celebration. But Lola can do more, Thom and Mars instruct the machine to intercept information from the future to help British intelligence. It proves a success, the Allies become victorious – until Thom makes a fatal mistake and the future becomes a nightmare.
Andrew Legge’s wildly inventive debut is both a playful time travel and ode to pop music, as well as a reflection on ‘what if’ historiography, the manipulative power of mass media and the desire to bend past and future to one’s own will, for better or worse.