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Time, Place, and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run 141concerns of Run Lola Run, the ultimate horizon into which the film intervenesand inserts itself, both on a representational and on a broadersocial-cultural level, is the city of Berlin. It has often been noted that Tykwer’srepresentation of Berlin is extremely contradictory: Although, as onecommentator put it, “the film is replete with images and reminders of divisionsand separations past and present that continue to exist in Germanyand particularly in Berlin after the Wende,” most of the identifiable sites,as, e.g., the Gendarmenmarkt or Friedrichstraße, largely have a decontextualized,de-territorialized “symbolic function” (Hamm-Ehsani2004, p. 53). While Berlin is thus still recognizable, the film consciouslyavoids drawing Lola’s route across the signature tourist attractions, but rathercreates an abstract or virtual urban space, in which Lola, simply by turningaround a corner, from one shot to the next, is transported fromPotsdamer Straße in Kreuzberg to Unter den Linden in Mitte. Tykwer evengoes so far as to intentionally, in only one reverse cut, have the road sign“Friedrichstraße” change into “Behrendtstraße.”But why “would Tykwer strive to make Berlin ‘as unrecognizable as possible?’” (Flinn 2003, p. 208), for example, by overtly employing Kuleshoveffects like the one just mentioned. Flinn has answered this question inexplaining the utter heterogeneity of the urban environment in which theaction takes place as a challenge or just another invitation to the audienceto “enter into a ‘game’ [. . .] of identifying locations” (2003, p. 208).Others have interpreted the fact that in Run Lola Run “Berlin becomes asomewhat nonessential, generic urban place” (Flinn 2003, p. 208) as a strategicconcession to an international audience appeal, or they have arguedthat in the end it would not be of central importance that Lola’s trajectoriesthrough Eastern and Western neighborhoods are disjointed and thecity locations jumbled, because the film’s vitality and energy would havemore to do with the promise of risk-taking and individual self-renewalthan with the construction or de-construction of a historical and localizableurban space. 11Plausible as these explanations may be, they seem to underestimate thecentral role the construction or deconstruction of the urban environmentplays in the overall aesthetic concept of the film, by neglecting how muchthe discontinuities and incongruities in the representation of Berlin are intune with the highly fragmented, virtual and highly paradoxical aestheticdisposition of Run Lola Run as a whole. Rather, the film’s paradoxical topographyand discontinuous rhythmical orchestration of the city seem tocreate a representation of Berlin as a transitional point between the “ ‘no