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Time, Place, and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run 133scene” work as “a kind of highlighted ‘reset’ button, usually emphasizingmatters of timing” (Bordwell 2002, p. 94). As such, these shots correspondto what Bordwell has identified as a “viewer-friendly device in the contextof what might seem to be ontologically or epistemically radical possibilities”of the forking-path film, namely that “the fork is signposted”(Bordwell 2002, pp. 91, 93).Forking-Path Plot, Multi-Draft NarrativeAltogether, Bordwell defines seven key conventions on which this genre ofthe forking-path film is said to rely, in order to “trim back [their potentialfutures, MW] to cognitively manageable dimensions, by means ofstrategies characteristic of certain traditions of cinematic storytelling,”thereby stretching and enriching extant narrative norms, without, however,“subverting or demolishing them” (Bordwell 2002, p. 91).The first of these conventions is: “Forking paths are linear.” Bordwell arguesthat in films with forking-path plots, “each path, after it diverges, adheresto a strict line of cause and effect.” “Instead of each moment being equallypregnant with numerous futures,” he writes, “one becomes far more consequentialthan the others, and those consequences will follow strictly fromit. Such linearity helps make these plots intelligible, yielding two or threestories that illustrate, literally, alternative but integral courses of events”(Bordwell 2002, p. 92).Following on to the second convention that the fork needs to be signposted,the third convention that forking paths tend to intersect includesrecurrent characters and background conditions across the different linesof action (Bordwell 2002, pp. 94–5). Bordwell’s fourth convention consistsin the contention that “Forking-path tales are unified by traditional cohesiondevices” (Bordwell 2002, p. 95), such as appointments and deadlines.The fifth convention, that forking paths “will often run parallel,” refers tothe observation that central components of the plot “emerge as vivid variantsof one another” in each trajectory. One example given by Bordwell isLola’s power to restore life in each of the episodes: “to herself at the endof the first episode, to Manni at the end of the second, and to the securityguard Schuster, whom she revives in the ambulance at the close of the third”(Bordwell 2002, pp. 96–7).In the context of defining the sixth convention, “All paths are not equal;the last one taken presupposes the others,” Bordwell argues that “forking-path