After the game is before the game...

Lola has to save his boyfriend’s live, that’s it. It doesn’t matter how she makes it, but she has to get 100,000 marks in less than twenty minutes. She has to run, a lot. The movie is divided into three different plotlines of the same story in which some specific events make a “butterfly effect” in Lola’s journey. The dog in the stairs, the lady in the sidewalk, the homeless tramp, the guy with the stolen bike, the ambulance, his father’s colleague who crashes his car, his father, and obviously, Manni. But, can we consider that there is a special thing that makes the outcome of each of the three plotlines different?

I think there isn’t, everyone of them is important, maybe in each plotline all the events have a different magnitude, but there is not an event that changes everything. Some of them don’t affect Lola and it’s the other way around, Lola affects their lives. Maybe some events affect in a more considerable way, but if one didn’t happen, everything would have changed. Each of them is important because it affect time, which in the story is essential to save Manni’s live.

As I said before, all the events are important in each plotline, but we must consider some of them that may affect more the story. For example, the dog in the stairs; maybe in the first plotline it doesn’t have an effect on Lola, but in the second one the guy with the dog makes Lola fall down the stairs. This simple fact may seem stupid, but it changes the whole story because it makes Lola run slower, so by the time she gets with his father, Lola listen to everything he says to his lover. This makes Lola furious and decides to rob the bank.

Finally, other event I consider makes the outcome of each plotline different is the father’s colleague who crashes his car. He is part of the story in a secondary way because he is going to pick Lola’s father, so if Lola hadn’t make him crash, the three plotlines would had changed and Lola wouldn’t get in time to the bank to talk with his father. Unconsciously, by meeting him, Lola makes possible getting to the bank in time, and even though in the last plotline were she wins the money in a casino because she doesn’t find his father at the bank, neither Manni or Lola end up death, so that was the answer for the whole thing: not talking to his father.


It is very interesting how such insignificant things can change the plotline in such a big way; even a fall, a car accident or a dog barking can change a story. I like the movie because it really gets you, there isn’t a moment in which you can get distracted because if you do, you may lose a thing that may change everything. The three plotlines are very exciting because everything happens really quickly and you can get identified with the fear of Lola and his true hurry to save Manni's life. TIme is fundamental because every second Lola wastes has a consequence in the future.