Winter Sleepers (1997)

I was so impressed with Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run that I pretty much added all of his films to my watchlist. Several years later, I finally decided to watch some of those and I started with Winter Sleepers (German: Winterschläfer).

Set in a snowy alpine resort in Bavaria (aka dream place), the film follows the lives of five people --Laura (Marie-Lou Sellem), a surgical nurse, Rebecca (Floriane Daniel), a translator, René (Ulrich Matthes), a projectionist in a cinema, Marco (Heino Ferch), a skiing instructor and Rebecca's boyfriend, and Theo (Josef Bierbichler), a middle-aged farmer-- whose lives are seemingly unconnected.

Run Lola Run (1998)

Original Title

Lola rennt

Genre

Action | Crime | Thriller

Director

Tom Tykwer

Country

Germany

Cast

Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri, Armin Rohde, Joachim Król, Ludger Pistor, Suzanne von Borsody, Sebastian Schipper, Julia Lindig, Lars Rudolph, Ute Lubosch, Monica Bleibtreu, Heino Ferch, Hans Paetsch

Plot

The film begins with Lola (Franka Potente) receiving a phone call from her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). During an important job, Manni collected 100,000 marks, but since Lola didn't shown up, Manni is forced to travel by subway but accidentally leaves the bad of money on the train.
Calling from a phone booth, Manni explains he has 20 minutes to gather 100,000 marks before Ronnie (Heino Ferch), his boss, arrives and kills him for not having the cash.
Planning to rob a nearby supermarket, Manni is urged to wait by Lola, who promises to find the money. She decides to ask her father (Herbert Knaup), who is a bank manager.
The main part of the film is divided in three runs. Each run starts from the same situation but develops differently and has a different outcome.

Opinion

Run Lola Run is one of the films symbol of the Post-Wall German cinema. The film fascinates from the very beginning. I was not expecting to see a 20 minutes story repeated 3 times with some differences but I didn't mind, it was never boring: I actually really liked it.
Frank Griebe deserves a special mention because what impressed me the most was the photography. The techno soundtrack, by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, blends perfectly with the film.
There is one thing I asked myself throughout the film: why does Lola run? Franka Potente totally proved she can run well, but couldn't she just take a taxi?

Quotes

"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding

Rating

8.0/10