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LOLA review: Great sci-fi film is rich in ideas, but poor in budget

In this counterfactual history, war is looming in 1930s England and two orphan sisters invent a machine that intercepts broadcasts from the future. What could go wrong when they lend it to intelligence services?

By Simon Ings

12 April 2023

Stefanie Martini & Emma Appleton in LOLA (Signature Entertainment)

Thom (left) and Mars with LOLA, a machine they created

Signature Entertainment

LOLA

Andrew Legge

In UK and US cinemas now

TWO sisters, orphans, play among the leavings of their parents’ experiments in radio. By 1938, the one who is a genius, Thomasina, or Thom (Emma Appleton), is listening to David Bowie’s Space Oddity on a ceiling-high TV set that can tune in to the future.

The politics of the day being what it is, Thom’s sister Martha, or Mars (Stefanie Martini), decides this invention – LOLA, after their dead mother – can’t …

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