by Arik Ben Treston

Run Lola Run
Columbia/Tri-Star, 1998

La Femme Nikita
Trimark, 1990

Once in a while you stumble across one hell of a movie that stays with you for quite a while. Run Lola Run is such a movie. While not out on video just yet, it can still be found in many art house cinemas if you look hard enough. This film is the sort of stylish experimentalism that one expects from the French, but, surprisingly, it is German. Director Tom Tykwer has pieced together a frantic and frenetic energy-ball of a movie that takes off like a shotgun blast and doesn’t stop.

Beautiful and mesmerizing actress Franka Potente plays Lola, a young punker who has twenty minutes to try to save her boyfriend’s life. Manny (Moritz Bleibtreu) is s small-time drug and diamond courier who screws up and loses one-hundred thousand Marks and now needs to get it back very quickly (the aforementioned twenty minutes) or his mob boss will kill him. Enter Lola, glowing red (and I mean red) hair and intense face, who tries to come up with a way to save Manny.

In an eighty-minute film, there obviously is enough time for a twenty-minute story, but this film doesn’t settle for that. Instead, we are treated to various scenarios of what might happen if Lola makes different decisions. This isn’t a new contrivance in filmmaking, but it is one that works exceptionally well in this one.

Nothing about the film is typical. Linear structure is left in the film books as chronology is given a kick in the ass. Much like one of last year’s best films, Go, watching the jilted structure gives you a sense of glee. "What now? What can they do next?"

To play with things even more, out of nowhere animation enters the picture. Some to supplement repeated action, some just to accent the scene. It works. The throbbing techno soundtrack doesn’t hurt things either.

Another cinematic trick that Lola uses is a fascinating way of showing us a person’s entire life in the span of two or three seconds. I don’t want to expound on that too much, though. It is something you need to see to get the full effect. Suffice it to say that it is a great device, but hopefully other movies won’t think of using it too much because it has to be done only in the right context of a film like this one. The main criticism that I can think of would be that the film gets a little too self-congratulatory at times. It is a cool movie and we know it, but from time to time, it can be too cool for its own good. In the big picture, a minor complaint though.

The depth that Potente brings to her character is great. Pretty hard for someone who we mainly see running for the entire film. She brings to her role much of the same heart that Anne Parillaud conveyed in La Femme Nikita. A hurt soul trying to achieve a better life. While running.

While on the subject of foreign, tough-as-nails women, a good film to accompany this one with is that French wonder, La Femme Nikita. Forget the USA Network TV-version of the movie. Forget the regrettable American remake Point of No Return. This is true pop-culture fun — the French way.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, it follows a young woman (Anne Parillaud) who is a junkie, a waste, and a loser. After killing a cop, she is put into a secret government program to rehabilitate her into a super-assassin for the government. While seen by some French as an American-style film, it retains, in its core, a foreign feel with respect to character development and progression.

Having cleaned up her act (thanks to Bob, played quietly and effectively by Tcheky Karyo), Nikita must start her new life as a killer. Slowly settling into this new phase, she learns to be ready on a moment’s notice to be up and prepared to bump off someone. This becomes a little more difficult when she falls in love. Her new boyfriend has no idea what she is into and the fact that she can never reveal her true self to him is killing her. Parillaud manages to infuse her role with true confliction and heart, her playful mood so quickly interrupted by cryptic phone calls giving her new assignments.

Nikita plays fast and hard. While being an action film, we still get to know the characters through all of the explosions, gunfire, killings, and chases. A component which is lacking in many American action films, where quick quotable lines pass for character development.

These two films would make a perfect double feature (and Go would make it a perfect triple feature.) Ideally, you should see these subtitled and not dubbed. No matter how tough it is for some to read and watch a movie, it is worth getting the original source dialogue instead of a poor substitute. These two are adrenalin-pumping movies that will knock the wind out of you and make you wish for more.

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