Lola: A cautionary tale about Time Travel; even if it just involved intercepting future Radio and TV broadcasts. Sisters Thomasina (Emma Appleton) and Martha (Stefanie Martini) have always been precocious, fiddling around with valves and electrical components since they were toddlers. Martha is the ideas person/inventor, Thomasina is the engineer who creates the devices. In October 1938 they build Lola, a chronovisor, they view and listen to future TV signals. They first see Bowie playing Space Oddity but go on to view rhe future Grand Nationals and other events to make money from betting. When World War 2 begins they intercept future news to warn people about bombing raids. Eventually tracked down by Military Intelligence they aid the War effort but when you interfere with the future yiu end up with unexpected consequences and no good deed goes unpunished.
The conceit is that is found footage, a film put together by Martha from newsreels, old home films and film shot by Martha on 16 mm stock. It is wonderful in black and white, blurry at times, blacking/whiting out. Changes made to actual 1930s/40s cinenews are seamless and transforms history. Bowie references provide many in jokes and cultural references, as the girls sing and dance in the future music. An Anti-Bowie. Reggie Watson (Shaun Boylan) delivers sinister tunes in a Bowiesque style. The sisters are delightfully eccentric, even keeping a horse indoors, they live in an old crumbling manor house where they basucally raised themselves as "wild childen". Great performances by Appleton and Martini with Rory Fleck Byrne as an Intelligemce officer who falls for Martha and Aaron Monaghan as his manipulative superior. Neil Hannon provides the original soundtrack with Watson's authoritarian songs. Directed and written by Andrew Legge. 8.5/10,
