Victoria

Victoria; crime drama, Germany, 2015; D: Sebastian Schipper, S: Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Max Mauff, Burak Yiğit, André Hennicke

Berlin. Spanish girl Victoria is dancing in a night club, decides to go back home at 4:30 am, but bumps into four alcoholic guys lead by Sonne, and joins them on a walk in the streets. Victoria goes to a cafe to open it, and plays a piano for Sonne, before he departs. A few minutes later, Sonne returns with his friends and asks Victoria for a favor: she should just drive them in a car and back. At an underground parking garage, criminal Andi coerces Sonne and his friends to rob 50,000€ from a man who will enter a bank. They steal the money, Victoria drives them away in a car, but later the police tracks them down and a shootout ensues. Sonne is wounded, so Victoria takes a baby from an apartment and just walks past a police officer downstairs. The couple hide at a hotel, but Sonne dies from his wound, so Victoria walks away on the street.

"Victoria" is one of those movies that work only and exclusively thanks to one gimmick. The gimmick here is outstanding: this entire 120 minute film is filmed in only one take. This shows huge focus and craftmanship of the director Sebastian Schipper, but only on that one level. The camera follows the title heroine Victoria exiting from a night club, walking on the streets with four alcoholic guys, going to the rooftop of a residential building, then to her cafe, to an underground garage, driving a car in front of a bank for the guys to make a robbery, running away through the park from the police, hiding in an apartment and a hotel. Throughout this entire time and various locations, the camera is able to keep its focus and avoid any technical errors, which is a feat. However, the entire script was only 12 pages long, and it shows, since Schipper did not invest that much attention or care towards writing a concise storyline, leaving the film too banal or heavily overstretched and improvised by the actors, who seem to lead the story more than the director in this instance. Too many of these scenes and dialogue are routine, reducing the enjoyment value. Without this gimmick, this would have been a rather standard crime flick about people on the margins.

Grade:++