Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Starring Barbara Sukowa and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
Starring Barbara Sukowa and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
In a Nutshell: A building commissioner falls for the mistress of a corrupt developer.
Lola should have been the moment when Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s career peaked. Nimbly avoiding muddy pastiche, Lola mixes satire, melodrama and a world-bitten cynicism into a charming caricature of class struggle politics. It takes its material to extremes, skipping an overt manipulation on Fassbinder’s part, while slyly deconstructing bourgeois under its audience’s nose. The film takes place in a post-WWII West Germany town, governed by amorality. Its contractors and businessmen hustle money from town officials for “reconstruction” purposes. Enter Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a building commissioner deemed un-corruptible thanks to a principled idealism (and just a touch of naivety). Von Bohm’s methods bring fear to the crooked, namely Schuckert (Mario Adorf). He complains to his mistress, a cabaret singer and prostitute named Lola (Barbara Sukowa), implying that such a woman would be beneath Von Bohm. Shuckert bets that Lola would not be able to court Von Bohm. She does, though their relationship grows faster than either would have predicted.
Lola should have been the moment when Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s career peaked. Nimbly avoiding muddy pastiche, Lola mixes satire, melodrama and a world-bitten cynicism into a charming caricature of class struggle politics. It takes its material to extremes, skipping an overt manipulation on Fassbinder’s part, while slyly deconstructing bourgeois under its audience’s nose. The film takes place in a post-WWII West Germany town, governed by amorality. Its contractors and businessmen hustle money from town officials for “reconstruction” purposes. Enter Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a building commissioner deemed un-corruptible thanks to a principled idealism (and just a touch of naivety). Von Bohm’s methods bring fear to the crooked, namely Schuckert (Mario Adorf). He complains to his mistress, a cabaret singer and prostitute named Lola (Barbara Sukowa), implying that such a woman would be beneath Von Bohm. Shuckert bets that Lola would not be able to court Von Bohm. She does, though their relationship grows faster than either would have predicted.
A vibrant palette and slow burning love story do little to take out the bite of Lola’s send-up of the post-war values. The distinctions do not offset each other, just a dark undertone to the dreamy, candy-coated festivities. And they are quite festive. Adorf is delightfully incorrigible while Mueller-Stahl’s can convey a wistful innocence with only his ice-blue gaze. Both are little match for Sukowa’s run of the emotional gamut. To balance so many facets of her character (dedicated mother, wounded mistress, ambitious social climber while both ashamed and empowered through her prostitution) risks the same tonal mess of the rest of the film. Sukowa more than succeeds; her rendition of “The Fisherman of Capri” at a key discovery is a masterpiece of frenzied insecurity.
Its other values aside, Lola’s biggest attraction is still Fassbinder’s auteurism. Lola, Von Bohm and Schuckert are portrayed as multi-dimensional while still acting allegorically. Their stories and interactions work in the same manner; humanism coloring in historical observation. This way, Lola shirks the obvious sentimentality of pat conclusions about its people or time. Fassbinder just tells us a story, flourished with honest human detail. Unfortunately, what should have been the height of Fassbinder’s career became his antepenultimate after drug-induced heart failure. But Lola can be lovingly regarded as his archetypal Fassbinder. Sheer joy, blunt characterization, a dark satirical aftertaste and everything else Fassbinder; a cornerstone of a peerless career.
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