@Luke: Yeah, I think you’re right. I vaguely recall him grabbing the groundhog, ramming the blockade and going off a cliff, but it’s been a long time since I saw that movie. The whole time looping would be a mixed blessing. The only things that really matter are things that improve you (such as him learning to play the piano) since everything else is reset, but it would be nice to have a few days to cause trouble ;)

I saw “Lola Rennt” in Germany, a long time ago. I really enjoyed the film very much. I watched it a second time in France and it helped me notice new details I had missed. It is a simple movie but which is quite true to its title: completely on speed… I loved it and it is a movie which is a perfect example of a generation of German film-makers of the 80’s and 90’s, like Berlin Alexanderplatz or Europa, Europa.

@Andrew – a little bit OT but LOL! Also VLC is good for what it is – an clean and safe open source project. It also has a minimalist user interface which is something that I like.

I never really noticed any of the shortcomings mentioned in the movie. I guess these things didn’t bother me. If I want quality I just watch in on DVD on an actual TV screen. :P

Here you go:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v14227375XD2gcN2Y

@Ian Actually I believe this happened in Groundhog Day. I believe that Bill Murray’s character actually stole an armored track, and tried to run a police blockade or something like that at one point. Then he sort of turned suicidal, but of course killing himself only made him loop back in time.

They didn’t really explore the dark side of this because it was a comedy but yeah, he did begin to go crazy and he did turn to evil initially. I think that Groundhog Day made the point that you would probably get bored with evil at some point. I mean if you are immortal like in Groundhog Day (ie. death only skips you back to the next loop) you can pretty much go all out and do the worst, most depraved shit you can think of. But I bet doing it the 50’th or 100’th time will not hive you the same adrenaline rush or whatever you were getting out of it. Chances are you’d go on a long crazy binge of exploitation, and then eventually start looking for constructive things to do – if nothing else just to try something different. :)

Whenever I imagine what I’d do if the repeating time period happened to me, I always think that without knowing the cause, I would never be able to do anything really fun/bad. I wouldn’t risk doing something that I couldn’t live with (at least, not in the first few recurrences).

There have been a lot of movies on this topic as well as shows. In fact, a recent Eureka episode–available online for free but I’m too lazy to get the link for you–featured this time recurrence issue, but one interesting thing was that the looping of time was injuring the main character. That actually made it more interesting for me, because there was some sense of urgency (which it sounds like Lola Rennt created in a different way).

I think there was also a movie called 12:01 or something like that with the same repeating time issue.

I haven’t yet seen a movie that has a main character who really takes advantage of the daily “clean slate” in any (for lack of a better word) negative way. Imagine a guy who started out pretty average but started getting crazy from all the repetition. He could start out with some sexual harassment kind of issues and work his way up to violence and assault. I’m sure that most of us know at least one person we would consider hitting if we knew the day was going to repeat anyway. Hmm, kind of like the guy in Primer… but take it farther. He could go to the grocery store, grab a drink and start drinking it there, then eat some food off the shelves, and as he walks out and a clerk tries to get him to pay, he could just punch the clerk and keep on walking. Remove the character’s conscience and the idea could become very interesting.

Already seen it :mrgreen: (I was kinda surprised when I saw the title come up in my RSS reader) I used the IMDB top 250 list as a starting point to watch a whole bunch of films, and Lola Rennt is on there.

I liked it… the ending was a little… unlikely, to say the least, but I guess that fits in with the ideas about how much of life is determined by random fluke and chance, and her accepting that and letting it do its thing led to success.

A good friend of mine while I was in the Army had me watch this movie a few years ago. It quickly turned in to one of my favorite movies. I was surprised to see the actress who played Lola show up in the “Bourne” movies (Franka Potente).
Little film treasures like this one are the reason I always keep my eyes open for international films like this that you rarely catch in US theatres.

Great review.