Lola’s wardrobe also reflects her gradual unraveling and eventual evolution. “When she’s sticking to her game plan, she looks more buttoned-up,” Gering points out. “After she and Luke break up, she becomes a bit of a mess. The cliché would have been to go with ‘sad colors,’ like browns and greys, but we decided to present her in a disheveled way instead, which reflects her state of mind.”
No less care was taken with the men’s wardrobe. “Since Luke is a hip, urban young guy, his pants are carefully selected as what someone his age living in his neighborhood would wear,” Gering says. “His look is not too trendy, not too hipster, but very current. Because he is an artist, we added little touches like paint splatters on the cuffs of his pants.”
Wein’s experience editing BREAKING UPWARDS came in handy when he sat down with Suzy Elmiger, one of the editors of LOLA VERSUS. “He really understands the process, which allowed us to work really fast and still experiment with structure,” she says. “Daryl wasn’t afraid to go in and roll up his sleeves. We got feedback from different quarters as we went along and were able to incorporate it easily.”
Wein and Lister-Jones were very hands-on with their music selection for the film, says Elmiger. “They are unbelievably astute about that aspect of filmmaking. Some of the scenes, like the montages of walking around the city, were cut to music. It’s a difficult thing to do. When there’s no dialogue, you’re reliant on the music to tell the story without making it into a music video.”
Wein and Lister-Jones know they are fortunate to have had so much support for making LOLA VERSUS. With all the disparate elements assembled, they want audiences to see the film and think about their own relationships, as well as those they see on the screen in the movie. “I hope that people will be able to laugh, while also allowing themselves to be hit on a gut level,” Wein says. “That’s what I aim for when I make a movie.”
Lister-Jones’ biggest wish is that it will appeal to moviegoers across the board. “Conventional wisdom says that women go to movies made to appeal to men more often than the reverse,” she notes. “In this film, we are harking back to a time when relationship movies weren’t ‘chick flicks.’ They were about issues that everyone deals with. Our greatest hope is that this will cross the lines of gender, age, class and race, because the themes are universal.”
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