My First Foreign Film

I met my husband in 1998.  We were both art students are UW Milwaukee.  His interest was film.  For me, my interest was photography. 

When it came to movies we had similar likes and dislikes.  He developed his love for the classic films by watching them with his mother.  For me, I watched classic movies out of boredom and necessity.  We did not have cable so often times I would be stuck watching PBS and on the weekends they played a lot of classic movies.  My dad would be grilling outside and ask me to cook some stuff in the kitchen.  While doing this I would have the TV on and these old time movies would play.  My dad would come in and take a peek and start telling me about his memories about seeing whatever movie was playing.  My love for the classics didn't really come to fruition until I met my husband. 

About three months into our relationship the movie Run Lola Run came out.  It was a foreign film and it was playing at the Oriental.  I was not really a fan of foreign films and I did not dislike them.  I just was not a fan of going to movie theaters so I was not enthusiastic about going to one to see this film.  We went.  I fell in love. 

I feel this is the perfect film to introduce people to foreign films.  I hear a lot about how people do not like to have to read the subtitles because they fear they are missing out of the visual aspect of the film.  I was kind of the same way.  The great thing about this film, is as the title suggest, Lola is running.  She is doing a lot of it.  I mean A LOT!  So there is not a whole lot of dialogue happening.  There are sections, but it is broken up nicely so one does not feel like they are constantly reading and not watching. 

The plot for the movie is that Lola gets a call from her boyfriend Manni.    He lost $100,000 Deutschmarks, which in 1999, came out to be around 50K in US money on a subway.  The money belongs to a very mean, very bad, criminal.  He is set to meet this guy in 20 minutes to give him his money.  If he doesn’t have it, very bad things will happen to him.  Manni has reached out to his girlfriend to help.  If together they can not figure out a way to get the money, Manni will rob a store.  There are three very different ways this situation can turn out and it all depends on some minor event that takes place while Lola is running to figure something out. 

I really do love this movie.  If you are someone who has not really watched many foreign films because you are not a fan of subtitles, I highly suggest giving this movie a chance.  It is a good warm up to getting used to subtitles.  Be warned, you might become addicted to foreign films.