Fassbinder's glorious penultimate film is a giddy fusion of all his influences: Jean Genet and Jean-Luc Godard (the use of a brothel as a metaphor for capitalist society, exchange and demand; role-play); Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (the very 1920s political analysis; the sardonic comedy, where all ends happily for the characters, dismally for humanity and society; the horrified, bitter humour; the charismatic villains and compromised 'heroes' (Von Bohm's, and Germany's, residual Nazism is very telling)); Josef Von Sternberg ('Lola' is an update of 'The Blue Angel', another story about a Lola degrading a respectable citizen - here we cut off at the marriage; there is no need for public humiliation in an amoral society); Douglas Sirk (the use of the reviled form, melodrama, packing it with meaningful compositions, febrile camerawork, and dazzling, yummy colour - all with the intent of mocking the film's (and society's) 'reality', showing how it is constructed.
This is a wonderfully entertaining, accessible, funny film, and if Lola sometimes gets lost in the rather misogynistic mix, than such is the nature of boygenius.
This is a wonderfully entertaining, accessible, funny film, and if Lola sometimes gets lost in the rather misogynistic mix, than such is the nature of boygenius.