A seductive cabaret singer-prostitute pits a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, launching an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world wher... Read allA seductive cabaret singer-prostitute pits a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, launching an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything-and everyone-is for sale.A seductive cabaret singer-prostitute pits a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, launching an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything-and everyone-is for sale.
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- Stars
- Awards
- 4 wins & 1 nomination total
- Timmerding
- (as Karl Heinz von Hassel)
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Featured reviews
"Lola" is a combination of many genres- satire, drama, comedy, and musical. It mixes glamor with very serious themes. Striking Barbara Sukowa is a singer-whore Lola who sets up to seduce the incorruptible local building commissioner, unbelievably blue-eyed Armin Mueller-Stahl. Lola went through many losses, humiliations, and disappointments during the war and right after it and she wants to be an independent business woman for which she decided to win over the man everyone kept telling was not for her.
As Barbara Sukowa recalls, Fassbinder told the critical stories but he did not make them dry or theoretical. He did not use the intellectual or academic approach to his stories. He hated gray "kitchen" naturalism and he was mixing Hollywood glamor with specific German realities creating his own style that was sexy and appealing. While many German film makers of his generation were influenced by the American directors like Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes, Fassbinder was very impressed by Douglas Sirk and his style.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder died at the age of 37 just as he was completing his last movie, "Querell". He had made over 30 films during 12 years. He began directing in 1969 revealing in his work New Germany, often heartless and materialistic. Fassbinder's talent and the quantity and quality of his output are incredible. It is like he knew he would die young and he was obsessed by finishing as many films as it was physically possible, majority of which (including "Lola") were way ahead of their time.
Barbara Sukowa is terrific as the brassy broad reminiscent of the old classic goddesses like Marlene Dietrich. Armin Mueller-Stahl is always Armin. There are other great performances. This is a morality fable. It has a slightly surreal melodramatic feel. It's all very intriguing.
Lola was my first Fassbinder film, so I don't know how it compares to his other works or the other two films in the BRD trilogy, but I can say that I was impressed by the unique style. Almost all of the scenes are lit with very bright and coloured lights, frequently painting the characters in different colours even when in the same frame. The music is also light in tone, often highly comedic, making the serious-sounding tale of corruption appear as silly and petty games of fooling each other. Various characters also provide plenty of over-the-top comedy; particularly Schukert whose dancing in the brothel with the singing Lola on his shoulders provides perhaps the most outrageous scene in the whole film. Nevertheless, it's not all comedy, as the characters' serious emotional development is also examined. Besides von Bohm's realization of the true nature of things, Lola's confusion about what to do with the men surrounding her is also absorbing to see.
All in all, Fassbinder's exaggerated and satirical approach to Germany's era of post-war rebuilding is thoroughly entertaining thanks to the visual style and the lovely music. The actors, from the obnoxious Mario Adorf to the enigmatic Barbara Sukowa, do a good job too, and I consider the film a both delightful and thought-provoking piece of cinema that has definitely got me interested in seeing more of the director's work.
None of the characters are likable they are all seedy local politicians, after all, but they slowly grow on us. Schukert, in particular takes some getting used to. Fassbinder takes delight in showing us that everyone is corrupt even apparently incorruptible people. Everyone has a weakness, which is their price. Both money and desire corrupts and debases it's inevitable - you might as well be practical about it, take pity on yourself and embrace it. In particular, corruption is the price of having eroticism in the world and that's something we can't do without.
As the film goes along, the darkish tone gives way to levity once you realise that nobody is really going to get hurt. There are some genuinely pensive and romantic moments as well as some fairly gently humour - Von Bohm's neurotic secretary is quite funny. Very little is convincing though - particularly the Von Bohm's infatuation (he seems a little too old, and a little too naive) and the outcome is even less so. There's very little reliable sociology going on here. Women are viewed as chattels and Lola herself is not really given an adequate personality nor was Barbara Sukowa noteworthy in the part.
It's worth watching if only for it's striking visual design. The film is lit throughout in lurid primary colours even outside in broad daylight faces are bathed in coloured light. Perhaps these colours spread outwardly from the nightclub's red light, diffracting through the ordinary world into rainbow hues. It is sometimes intrusive, but mainly effective and attractive.
Fassbinder has extracted one aspect of social behaviour and amplified it to absurdity here. This is not the way the world is, but is perhaps the way he would like it to be: fallible and corrupt, but erotic and benign.
Barbara Sukowa as Lola, is a magnificent actress, especially where she accepts the humiliations of her life, but will not allow them to transform her into the brutalized animal level of behavior, that she observes all around her. Always optimistic, she pursues her goal {to escape from the prison of degradation, she is in}. We, {the viewers}, follow her journey, as she overcomes obstacle after obstacle, to eventually triumph, and take her place as a citizen of her particular Peyton Place.
How she does it is colorful and informative. Fassbinder gives you all the different strata of class prejudice, as the money men are in cahoots with the bureaucrats, who are all, in turn, driven by libidinal desires. Mixing up cabaret elements, together with the controlling power of money, blended in with, the huge heart of those that earn their crust as sex workers {this, is so obviously where Fassbinder's sympathies lie}. Fassbinder has used high cinematic values in this movie, where all the characters, {ultimately}, believe that "Cash is King". Kitsch is displayed with the usual Fassbinder panache and as with many other movie portrayals of prostitution, the more sordid side, such as violence and intimidation, and the risk to health, are not mentioned, giving the otherwise sharp satire of the corrupt financial world, a rather fairy tale gloss.
Fassbinder, who always understood the paramount need to entertain, still manages to convey the malaise, that the aftermath of the Nazi demolition of all moral standards, which had left an entire nation bereft of a natural ethos of right and wrong. Fassbinder gives you entertainment and awareness, a difficult tightrope to straddle.
Fassbinder, like Diogenes, was always in search of an honest man. He had a celebratory attitude to life, and his mirth is infectious.
Did you know
- TriviaPart of the BRD Trilogy along with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) and Veronika Voss (1982). "BRD" stands for Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the official name of West Germany and of the united contemporary Germany, period in which those three stories takes place.
- GoofsThe photograph above the mayor's desk shows downtown Houston, Texas as it looked in the 1960s. The film is set in the late 1950s.
- Quotes
Lola: Did you love your wife very much?
Von Bohm: I don't really know, perhaps. I came back from the war, and told myself: That's the woman I really love, otherwise I wouldn't have married her. But I didn't feel love. It was just... like the memory of love... Then she told me there was someone else, and for the first time since being back, I really felt something. Not love, but pain. I was thankful to my wife for teaching me how to feel again, even if it was pain.
- ConnectionsEdited into Großes Herz und große Klappe - Helga Feddersen (2001)
- SoundtracksUnter fremden Sternen
Lyrics by Aldo von Pinelli
Composed by Lotar Olias
(p) 1959 Polydor
Performed by Freddy Quinn
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
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- Also known as
- BRD 3 - Lola
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- DEM 3,500,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $8,144
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $11,623
- Feb 16, 2003
- Gross worldwide
- $9,530
- Runtime1 hour 55 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1
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