Lola + Bilidikid
Germany 1998
Reviewed by Paul Julian Smith
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Berlin, the present. Murat, a closeted gay Turkish teenager, lives with his widowed mother and homophobic brother Osman. Meanwhile, Lola, a transvestite dancer in a nightclub, lives with her macho lover Bili, a rent boy. Lola and her friends are menaced by neo-Nazi youths. When Lola attempts to make contact with Murat's family, Murat discovers Lola is his brother, previously thrown on to the streets by Osman. In a subplot, wealthy, older German Friedrich becomes involved with another young rent boy, Iskender, to the consternation of Friedrich's conservative mother.
Murat visits Lola's nightclub and arranges to meet her the next day. After a nocturnal birthday party in the park, Lola argues with Bili and, leaving alone, is threatened by thugs. Later she is found dead. Bili vows to take revenge on the neo-Nazis. Dressing Murat as a transvestite whore and luring the thugs to an abandoned building, he mutilates and kills two of them but is shot dead. Murat escapes and returns home. Still in drag, he confronts Osman, who had murdered Lola himself and whose homophobia is a front for his own homosexuality. When their mother hears this she slaps Osman in the face and leaves the family home with Murat.
Review
Director Kutlug Ataman opens his second feature Lola + Bilidikid (his first was The Serpent's Tale) with silent nocturnal pacings through the cruising ground of Berlin's Tiergarten. But he quickly cuts to a Turkish transvestite nightclub, all music, light and saturated colour. This is typical of a film that treats serious issues such as racism and homophobia in an engaging and humorous way. Parallel plotlines are organised to maximum dramatic and ironic effect. Young Murat is victimised by his homophobic brother Osman, just as his older sibling the transvestite Lola is oppressed by his/her macho lover Bili (indeed, one prescient queen observes that, despite flagrant differences, Osman and Bili are two of a kind). Or again, Murat's kindly, downtrodden Turkish mother is mirrored by Friedrich's steely, aristocratic German parent; in spite of appearances, each woman seeks only the happiness of her gay child. While their eventual teaming up seems implausible, they reflect the optimism of the film, one that at no point minimises the difficulties of Turkish gays in contemporary Berlin.
Friedrich's mother attempts to buy off her son's lover with the priceless heirloom of a cameo. When he throws it from the car window in disgust, it is retrieved later by lucky queens. Ataman consistently uses visual motifs of this kind to tell his story. For example, Murat returns to Lola the red wig she had worn when she came out to her family, only to wear it himself after she is murdered. And Ataman, who is also the author of a video installation called Women Who Wear Wigs, is clearly up to speed on theories of gender and performance.
Perhaps the most important feature of this first Turkish film with explicit homoerotic content is its exploration of different national forms of homosexuality and masculinity. Brutish Bili favours the traditional Mediterranean model in which "a man is a man and a hole is a hole." But this does not hold for younger gays such as Lola and Murat who believe that two men can love one another without one becoming a woman. If some of the dialogue sounds suspiciously close to Almodóvar ("A woman's got to look after her dick"), Ataman, who is both scriptwriter and director, spices things up with less familiar phrases ("May Allah render his semen putrid"). In spite of its fascinating cultural distinctiveness, then, Lola follows other national cinemas (Cuba's Strawberry and Chocolate comes to mind) in allowing a first treatment of homosexuality to emerge only under the sign of ostentatious camp.
Casting seems to follow the Beverly Hills 90210 convention (Baki Davrak is clearly a decade over-age for the 17-year-old hero), but performances are professional, locations atmospheric, and production values surprisingly high. Mainstream narrative and characterisation make the film all the more subversive, because challenging content is presented in an accessible form. The winner of prizes in both Berlin and Turin, Lola was screened in Turkey only in the face of death threats to the director (now an exile in London) and thanks to the courageous efforts of coproducer Zeynep Özbatur. In the final sequence Murat abandons his symbolic red wig as his mother removes her equally emblematic headscarf. A brave political and cinematic success, Lola suggests a similar alliance between gay men and women in the interests of Turkish democracy.
Credits
- Director
- Kutlug Ataman
- Producer
- Martin Hagemann
- Screenplay
- Kutlug Ataman
- Director of Photography
- Chris Squires
- Editor
- Ewa J. Lind
- Production Designer
- John Di Minico
- Music
- Arpad Bondy
- ©Zero Film
- Production Companies
- Zero Film presents
- with funding from Filmförderung in Berlin-Brandenburg/
- Filmstiftung Nordhein-Westfalen
- a co-production with WDR/ARTE
- Executive Producer
- James Schamus
- Co-producers
- Martin Wiebel
- Zeynep Özbatur
- Associate Producer
- Mary Jane Skalski
- Production Co-ordinator
- Claudia Spiller
- Production Office Co-ordinator
- Gabriele Lins
- Production Manager
- Markus Bensch
- Unit Production Managers
- Sabine Schulmeyer
- Klaus Grosse Darrelmann
- Post-production Co-ordinator
- Claudia Spiller
- Assistant Director
- Tanja Däberitz
- Script Supervisor
- Numi Teusch
- Casting
- German:
- Annette Borgmann
- Cornelia Partmann
- Turkish:
- Yüzler Sesler
- Elif Esin Cokünal
- Script Adviser
- Jean Castelli
- Turkish Dialogue Adviser
- Yildirim Türker
- Special Effects
- Nefzer Babelsberg GmbH
- Roland Tropp Pyrotechnik
- Atlantis SFX
- Adolf Wojtinek
- Art Director
- Mona Kino
- Set Decorators
- Otu Tetteh
- Mathias Nitschke
- Markus Leuwer
- Joao Gonzaga-Silveira
- Anselm Breig
- Alexander Liebenthron
- Storyboard Artist
- Andreas Ammann
- Costume Designer
- Ulla Gothe
- Wardrobe
- Najad Kirchberger
- Vanessa von Klier
- Make-up
- Key Artist:
- Axel Zornow
- Artist:
- Xenia Eichholz
- Title Design
- Robert Dawson
- Titles
- Cinema Research Corporation
- Soloists
- Viola:
- Sabrina Briscik
- Guitar:
- Thomas Dudek
- Oboe:
- Matthias Fischer
- Cello:
- Thilo Krigar
- Orchestra
- Orchester Sherry Bertram
- Conductor
- Achim Rothe
- Sound Engineer
- Marc Elsner
- Istanbul Belly Dance Coach
- Ömer Yilmaz
- Soundtrack
- "Raksat Samara" by Setrak Sarkissian, performed by Samara; "Beyim Buyursun" by Kadriye Batigün, performed by Habibe Batigün, Melisa; "Ich liebe dich" by Edvard Grieg, performed by Volker Schwarz; "Rosen im Schnee" by Günther Grewendorf, Arpad Bondy, performed by Tobias Neumann; "Lolas letzter Tanz" by/performed by Oruç Gürbüz; "Hiz" by Wolfgang Galler, Aziza-A, performed by Aziza-A; "Bu ates sönmez" by Tanay Tolaz, Paul Wuthe, Christoph Rinnert, performed by Tanay Tolaz; "Wo ist die Liebe" by Arpad Bondy, Sol Bondy, performed by Tobias Neumann; "Güzel kokulu çocuk" by Arpad Bondy, Kutlug Ataman, performed by Deniz Türkali
- Belly Dance Choreography
- Hakan Tandogan
- Sound Design
- Wolf Ingo Römer
- Sound Recording
- Axel Arft
- Re-recording Mixer
- Martin Steyer
- Dialogue Editor
- Elke Weisser
- Sound Effects
- Mel Kutbay
- Hans-Walter Kramski
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Jürgen Wilhelm
- Recordist:
- Henning Thölert
- Editor:
- Mark Meier
- Foley
- Meloton
- Transvestite Consultant
- Ceyhat Firat
- Dog Trainer
- Michael Schweuneke
- Cast
- Baki Davrak
- Murat
- Gandi Mukli
- Lola
- Erdal Yildiz
- Bili
- Michael Gerber
- Friedrich
- Murat Yilmaz
- Iskender
- Inge Keller
- Ute
- Hakan Tandogan
- Fatma Souad
- Cihangir Gümüsturkmen
- Lale Lokum
- Celal Perk
- Sehrazat
- Mesut Özdemir
- Kalipso
- Ulrich Simontowitz
- man in Tiergarten
- Hasan Ali Mete
- Osman
- Willi Herren
- Rudy
- Mario Irrek
- Hendryk
- Jan Andres
- Walter
- Hatice Tolgay
- neighbour
- Lisa
- Frau Schmidt, a dog
- Nisa Yildirim
- Fatma
- Aykut Kayacik
- Bili's friend
- Gundula Petrovska
- Hella
- Katharina Voss
- schoolteacher
- Isabell Wernitz
- Madeleine Bommert
- girls on schoolbus
- Sabine Winterfeldt
- Tilly
- Aziza-A
- nightclub singer
- Ursula Staack
- flower seller
- Andreas Leupold
- man in Chinese restaurant
- Andreas Kruse
- businessman
- Carla Hagemann
- little girl
- Mohammed Herzog
- Islamic priest
- Erden Alkan
- taxi driver
- Axel Pape
- dancing man
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Millivres Multimedia
- 8,552 feet
- 95 minutes 2 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour
- Subtitles