Editing in "Run Lola Run" and "Breathless"

The temporal organization in the two films were obviously unorthodox. Breathless not only jumped around, but it practically refused to explain much about the characters or the plot. The continuity was purposely nonexistent, therefore certain things feel unsure and I'm left to assume things.
Run Lola Run set up the plot and characters but jumped around to things that were happening simultaneously, in the future, or in the past. There were flashbacks, flash forwards, and the throbbing rave-techno soundtrack painfully illustrated the urgency with which Lola and Manni needed to act in their simultaneous situations. In the beginning, Schuster called it a game. Like a game, one can always go back and try something different when the end result is less than satisfactory. To use a mis-en-scene term, that makes the tradition in which the film was written more theatrical than naturalistic.

There is continuity in Run Lola Run. All of the characters' costumes and minor movements are consistent. There is disjunctive editing and it interacts with the continuity in a way that makes it complementary. When Lola is reliving some moments, there are discrepancies which are consistent with minor changes in the character's actions (like ripples in a pool outwardly affecting the rest of the water).

Cutting is used to extend my perspective in both of these films because it removes the audience from the story even more than a movie usually does. In some ways, both of the films sort of refused to share the whole stories, but Run Lola Run also shared intimate flash forwards of seemingly unimportant characters, and that's a privilege which the audience is never given. It may be sending mixed messages about the relationship between the film and the audience, but then again, being unsettled during a movie is hardly detrimental.

I think that's what this whole lack of continuity thing is about. If the audience is being kept on their toes and they're really thinking about the movie; and then they're actually investing more mental and emotional energy in the movie. Therefore, there's more reaction to certain events, and THAT'S entertainment.