Whereas good movies are usually judged by their direction, acting, and writing (among other things), a great movie is distinguished by its ability to get viewers to question, if only for a moment, their own fundamental understanding of the people around them and the world in which they live. Lola and Billy the Kid easily qualifies as the latter. 

Far more than a simple coming-of-age-and-coming-out story, this riveting and emotional tale portrays the Turkish immigrants' world of relative poverty and grime amidst Germany's ostensible wealth. It is a world where, for gay Turks, mortal danger can lurk in any shadow, around any corner, even in one's own home -- a world which, as director Kutlug Ataman says, is painted in "mascara and blood." 

Lola begins with two lovers -- drag queen Lola, played with misty-eyed aplomb by Gandi Mukli, and her hustler boyfriend Bilidikid, a sexy and infuriatingly homophobic Erdal Yildiz -- who live on the edge financially and emotionally in the seamy gay underworld of Berlin's Turkish youth. Lola and Bili are strapped for cash, and decide to appeal to Lola's long-lost and virulently homophobic older brother Osman for her rightful inheritance. In doing so she meets Murat, the 17-year-old brother she never knew, who in turn is struggling with his own sexuality. Upon discovering Osman's treachery, Murat runs away from home and dives into a community that's forced to walk a precarious line between the white, Christian, German populace -- which is generally tolerant of homosexuality but can be terribly racist -- and their own unforgivingly homophobic Muslim people. 

And when Lola is murdered, Bili uses Murat in a scheme to avenge her, leading them on an eye-opening, potentially fatal journey whose end is both grimly predictable and hypnotically suspenseful. 

Sequences in a subplot concerning the misadventures of Bili's friend Iskender, his older john-cum-lover Friedrich, Friedrich's caustic mother Ute, and Lola's drag buddies Kalipso and Shehrazade are interspersed throughout the film and offer the viewer much-needed periods of well-timed and well-directed comic relief. Kalipso's bitch-fest with a neighboring Muslim housewife is a hoot, and the knowing, aristocratic Ute crams more sass into a single bon mot than could be found in a barful of bitter old queens. This lighter take on the ethnic tensions faced by the Turks and the Germans is a refreshing counterpoint to the rest of Lola's bleakness. 

Ataman has not only offered us a well-crafted film, but an important one as well. The tragedy that befalls the title characters is cathartic for everyone else; from their violent ending springs a hopeful new beginning. The director himself said he wants all "gay, lesbian and heterosexual men and women who care about their own destiny, their journey in life, who think about the meaning of their own lives, to see this film with their loved ones." I couldn't agree more. 

--Will Way

Source : Obtained from PlanetOut.Com