Chapter 10 of 21 · 2'32"
Lola asks Walter for a ride and uses it to confess: she is not going roller-skating with Anne, she is meeting Nino Zachetti, the boy her father disapproves of. "You won't tell on me, will you?" she asks, and Walter, amused, plays along.
Lola Confides in Walter About Nino
Walter drives Lola Dietrichson homeward and she asks to be dropped at Vermont and Franklin. On the way she admits she lied to her family: she is meeting her boyfriend Nino, not a school friend. She tells Walter about Nino's bad luck and defends him, then they pull up and Nino joins them, cold toward the stranger.
The ride is a small conspiracy. Lola begins with a safe story, then tests Walter with the truth: "You won't tell on me, will you?" She spends the trip making Nino's case, blaming her father and Phyllis for not understanding her, and insisting she cannot give him up. Walter listens more than he talks, and the film uses him as the audience's ear, since he is already tangled up with Phyllis and now learns how the household looks from the daughter's side. When they reach the corner, Nino's greeting is nothing like Lola's warm story about him. "The name is Zachetti," he says, and warns her not to broadcast so much. Lola's defense of him and his sourness in front of a stranger sit side by side, and neither needs a comment.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“I thought you could let me ride with you, if you're going my way.”
It asks a favour as a soft possibility, so the other person can say no without anyone losing face.
Neutral
“You like roller-skating? I can take it or leave it.”
Two opposite verbs say everything at once: no strong feeling either way.
Informal
“I wish he'd see it my way. I can't give Nino up.”
The wish and the refusal sit side by side, so the loyalty is stated as a plain fact.
Neutral
“My father doesn't understand me and Phyllis hates me.”
Two short clauses sum up her home life: a father who doesn't get her and a stepmother who hates her.
Informal
Up next · 11accidentally on purposeThe scene: Walter Meets Phyllis at the MarketShe wants to get to the corner where Nino is waiting, and she uses the ride to tell someone about him. She also asks Walter not to tell her father.
She first says she is meeting Anne Matthews, because her father does not approve of Nino. She admits the truth once she trusts Walter not to give her away.
He does not know the man who drove Lola and dislikes that she told a stranger about them. He introduces himself by surname and tells her not to broadcast so much.
She sees him as unlucky rather than bad, blames his troubles on his temper and bad breaks, and insists she will not leave him even though her father disapproves.
She says her father thinks nobody is good enough for his daughter, except maybe the man who owns Standard Oil.
