Lola, une femme allemande

A common and probably unfair criticism of Fassbinder is that his film-making displayed a darkly misogynistic streak. Truthfully, rather than a misogynist, Fassbinder believed that both sexes were worthy of a good kicking -- he had no political reservations preventing him from showing women at their ugliest and most manipulative. Fassbinder, a man who had sex with both men and women and had complicated and unconventional relationships with members of both sexes, most likely viewed the distinction between men and women as a thin and hazy line; he based 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', a lesbian melodrama with absolutely no male actors in the entire film, on his own experiences with men, after all.

Fassbinder wanted to expose the ugly truth wherever it may lie: in response to a question he was once asked by Karlheinz Böhm as to where his political allegiance lay, he stated, 'No matter if it's on the right, left, top or bottom, I shoot in every direction.' Furthermore, some of Fassbinder's films display men at their ugliest and women at their most sympathetic, such as 'Martha', which features Margit Carstensen's character psychologically and emotionally tortured and gaslighted by her monster of a husband (the aforementioned Böhm) to such a degree that she ends the film both emotionally and literally crippled.

'Lola', however, is almost certainly one of the films that will attract the 'misogyny' label from many. The film's protagonist is, simply, a whore. She is unsympathetic, vain and manipulative. Everyone in the film knows that she is a whore (even her own embarrassed mother), with the sole exception of Armin Mueller-Stahl's character, a naive and ageing 'moralist', who falls in love with a mirage, a contrived, fictional version of her.

When Lola finally realises that the wealthy and respectable Von Bohm has fallen in love with her, her reaction is not one of joy or relief, or one of belief that she could potentially escape the ugly world she is trapped in -- instead she coldly realises she has another man with capital to exploit to the emotional bitter end, except this one comes with a ring.

'Do you want to live in a world without morality? A world that's only bad and rotten and corrupt?' Lola is asked. 'I would love to. My only problem is that they do not allow me to take part' is her darkly serious reply. You get the feeling that Lola chose the gutter, that the gutter didn't necessarily choose her; this is in contrast to many films about the 'liberation' of prostitutes.

The film is set in the strange era of immediate post-war Germany, a period in which an entire country awoke from mass hypnosis, literally bombed back into reality; a nation that had to rebuild itself, rediscover its dignity and learn to come to terms with its morass of guilt.

The use of colour filters in Fassbinder's late films is distinctive and powerful, creating a queasy and sleazy mood of the garish underworld; along with 'Querelle', 'Lola' is a great example of this. It's as if Fassbinder took the melodrama of his beloved Douglas Sirk and placed it right in the hungry stomach of Hell.

'Lola' is a strong film: unconventional, creative and fascinating, but it doesn't quite reach the level of brilliance of the other two entries in his 'BRD Trilogy' -- the outstanding 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' from 1979, and the tragic and near-perfect 'Veronika Voss' from the year of his death, 1982.

Von Bohm is from East-Prussia, his two "weaknesses" are "East-Prussian human beings and West-Frisian tea", he tells to Lola's mother who works as his house-keeper after he has been elected as the new head of the construction department by the city of Coburg. Coburg - as any German city in the time of the "Wirtschaftswunder" - is a place "where people have an outer and an inner life, and both have nothing to do with one another". Although Von Bohm agrees, he has not a ghost of an idea that the elegant and beautiful young lady who gets his hand-kiss is in her "inner" life the attraction of the local bordello where the "crows" (major, police president, politicians, heads of the governmental departments) and the "vulture" (Schuckert) reunite every evening while their wives are knitting at home or are already asleep.

It is amazing what Fassbinder made out of the Heinrich Mann-Von Sternberg drama "Professor Unrat" or "The Blue Angel", respectively. Fassbinder's Lola is not a man-murdering and at last unreachable "beauty" like the (not so beautiful) Marlene Dietrich, but a girl who has to nourish her little daughter and still has the hope for a better live. She is "open" for everybody and does not flirt with the distance. In the opposite: On the stage she goes from hand to hand and is something like a collective propriety of the "Creme De La Creme" of the little city. (The figure of Esslin - whose name is close to Enslin -, who quotes Bakunin in Lola's Boudoir, is probably the rest that remained from the original protagonist character of Professor Unrat.) Therefore, Fassbinder's Lola is not about the decrease of a society member by entering the "wrong" society, but about her way to become a part of her society and Von Bohm's desire to possess his beloved "object". This is managed in an almost fairy-tale-like style, typically (and ironically) for the Germany of the Adenauer-era, so that in the end everybody looks happy, since everybody got what he wanted: Lola says to Mrs. Schuckert: "Now I belong to you". Schuckert earns his 3 millions of D-Marks from the "Lindenhof", the Mayor will be reelected, and Von Bohm gets Lola. Then, Lola's little daughter asks him: "Are you happy now?". Von Bohm answers a bit hesitatingly by "Yes". Unlike Professor Unrat, he does not pay with his life for his love, but probably with his soul.

West Germany, late 1950s: Lola (Barbara Sukowa) is a singing prostitute working in a brothel that the town's bigwigs, even the mayor, like to frequent. To the annoyance of the corrupt construction entrepreneurs, especially a crass man named Schukert (Mario Adorf), the town's new building commissioner von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is an honest and idealistic man who tries to clean up the building license politics from bribery and cheating. One day Lola approaches von Bohm, piques his interest and eventually leads him to dream of marriage with her – but how will he react when Lola's true profession is eventually revealed?

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.

This looks absolutely wonderful throughout with astonishingly colourful lighting and much use of red and blue. The drawback is that with all the scenes similarly lit with bright colours a certain level of artifice is created. This is fantastic for the most effective night club scenes but becomes rather distracting elsewhere when we are being asked to take seriously the Blue Angel inspired antics of the well meaning older man and the flighty young dancer. It also distracts somewhat from the financial shenanigans. Overall, however, we get the drift and Fassbinder is once more trying to bring some awareness to a German population in denial, that they did not only loose the war but their very identity in the aftermath with all the divisions brought upon the nation by Russia and the West. Barbara Sukowa stars as the Dietrich type figure and very well she does too as she flirts with the corrupt property developer and the supposed socialist leaning reforming inspector. Awash with the benefits of the 'economic miracle' much helped by the funds plowed in for the rebuild, her actions ensure that the old man gets what he wants, the developer similarly and she sails off into the sunset, immorality levels safely restored.

Lola is a singer, and a sometimes-prostitute, in the whorehouse run by Schukert, a big vulgarian who also happens to have a land deal coming up and has such a reputation that he won't be hassled by a cop when at a checkpoint. A new building commissioner is in town, Von Bohm, and he's a very pure soul, non-corruptible, sensible, a 'moralist' if ever there was one. But he's soon entranced by a 'chance' meeting with Lola (who is, actually, put on the spot to charm the straight-arrow Von Bohm), and soon he becomes enraptured with her, to his possible demise. If this premise is pretty much similar to the Blue Angel, it's intentional so much so that I would consider this a full-blown remake- Blue Angel set this time in post WW2 Germany instead of pre-War, and with some extra doses of socio-political context thrown in (and, of course for Fassbinder, some added sensuality that works magnificently as classy-raunch, if that makes sense).

Fassbinder's film Lola, one of his last and the 2nd part of a BDR trilogy he made, is sumptuous melodrama, filmed with such a vibrant and eclectic and varied sense of color with the lighting and sets and costumes- on the faces and bodies and sets- that one can just look at any scene in this and find something fantastically stylized about it. It should be a real horror-show fable, but Fassbinder is something much of a realistic-romantic, if that also makes any sense, in that he thrusts naturalistic actors alongside a few 'personalities' (one of them a great actor playing Schukert, Mario Adolf), among such vibrant sets like the inside of the nightclub and amid the turmoil of the post-war German setting where the economy is finally back in boom (if not for everyone).

Occasionally some of the musical choices- or just the abundance of them in nearly every scene- is a bit much, and I was thrown off by what seemed like maybe too much of a happy ending considering everything tragic that has preceded it (Fassbinder doesn't let his characters completely off the hook, but it feels too clean-cut as well). However Fassbinder is also working on some prime material with a real eye for the harrowing scope of a tragic romance and the means of 'fitting-in' to a urban landscape where, according to Lola, Von Brum doesn't really fit in. It's also got Barbara Sukowa as the title character, obviously in a career-high-point, and Armin Mueller-Stahl in another of a long series of really interesting roles where he can show emotions but very wisely and carefully and appears to be reserved- sometimes deceptively reserved like in Eastern Promises- and for Von Brum it's one of his best.

Anyone who loves a juicy drama of romance and building-capitalist intrigue would do well to watch this. I'm sure it'll be one of Fassbinder's best. 9.5/10