LOLA achieved an overall appreciation score of 59.5%. Although some members appreciated this inventive and unusual film, many also found it somewhat amateurish, gimmicky and poorly acted. Some of the comments submitted:
- An unusual and delightful film.
- Extraordinary and new.
- This is what the film society should be all about! Unearthing a quirky and interesting and believable story with great music!
- Inventive and clever – really excellent.
- Great fun, highly creative, an imaginative construct well executed. Much enjoyed.
- Excellent & clever use of old clips to create an illusion of a different out come to the 2nd world war. Found it a little confusing at times & the flickering & blank sections of the film detracted my attention from what would have been a superb film.
- Great fun, highly creative, an imaginative construct well executed. Much enjoyed.
- Stylish and thought-provoking – good choice!
- A slower burner for me. The story line was clever but I found the filming too fragmented for me to relax and enjoy fully.
- Too many strands of events and causes. Difficulty at times of keeping track of storyline. Use of archival cine material interesting but sometimes distracting.
- This film was a clever original idea which did not quite work. I found the “amateur” photography very jerky to watch and the speech was not always clear.
- Thought it was ambitious and interesting.. especially the filming technique. Not entirely successful though … a bit unconvincing. Good to see an experimental film.
- Definitely not run-of-the-mill and not without interest. However, ultimately it left me unmoved. Well acted but not a great script, no characters I was really drawn to.
- In site of some impressive cinematography, the film was rather predictable and the characters were bland and unappealing.
- I found the the black white flashing and ‘through a lens’ filming style difficult to watch. It has a very clever story-line and filming tecnique but the style of filming made it difficult for me to remain ‘gripped’ by it.
- Some imaginative ideas and characters but very amateurish in its acting, writing and cinematography.
- A basically good theme for a film but one which needed expert screenplay, casting production and direction. Unfortunately this film didn’t have enough of those elements. The filming was gimmicky, the acting was unconvincing and plot development amateurish. An uncharacteristic lapse of judgement on the part of the selection process.
- Absolutely dire.
- No idea what was going on from start to finish. Unbearably superficial, woke and ahistorical all of which I found extremely irritating.
- I left early. It was incomprehensible both visually and audibly. A hotch potch of v. old footage.
- the shaking camera constantly gave me motion sickness. This felt like a watching some hipsters making a student film and it felt overwhelmingly style over substance. It was horrendous on so many levels.
- Two interchangeable girl geniuses seem to spend most of their time drunk. I think if you have an unintelligent plot you need to have something else going for you and I couldn’t find much humour or zaniness or charm in the film. And very little character development, which I expect is difficult to do in a home movie.