Directed by:
Sebastian SchipperCinematography:
Sturla Brandth GrøvlenComposer:
Nils FrahmCast:
Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yigit, Max Mauff, André Hennicke, Martin Goeres, Ernst Stötzner, Lena Klenke, Adolfo Assor, Philipp Kubitza (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Berlin, 4am. Victoria, a young woman from Madrid, meets Sonne and his three mates outside a club. The local guys promise to show Victoria the real side of the city, but they owe someone a dangerous favour that requires repaying that evening. As Victoria's flirtation with Sonne deepens into something more he convinces her to come along for the ride. And as the night takes on an ever more menacing character, what started out as a good time quickly spirals out of control. (Madman Entertainment)
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Reviews (10)
I probably didn’t get the film’s message, hence the low rating. When I found out it had over 70%, my jaw dropped so low it almost broke my toe. From my point of view, it’s a movie about a stupid girl, who after leaving a nightclub joins four drunk Germans. When they don't gangrape her within the first five minutes, she’s so thrilled that she joins them in a robbery and child kidnapping. The movie would be too short, so the filmmakers shrewdly filled it with pointlessly long scenes in which nothing happens. I don’t see any point in philosophizing about the influence of disco music on the development of characters, so this is the end of my review.
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(BE2CAN, Lucerna) A very intensive experience, likeable characters, a high degree of credibility and form that leaves you flabbergasted. For me, by far the best of this year’s Be2Can: it wasn’t too brooding, didn’t have any snobbish answer to existential questions, it even had a plot! And it got an applause, wow!
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Like Birdman, Victoria fails to convince us that the one-shot approach is anything more than a way to show off (the director likes to boast in interviews that, unlike Iñárritu, he didn’t use “invisible” digital editing and managed to get the whole film down on the third attempt with the actors after ten days of rehearsals). That said, it starts promisingly. Despite the seeming spontaneity, a clear plan and consideration for the viewer can be perceived behind the construction of the plot. All of the main characters are introduced to us during the lively prologue and we can easily remember them thanks to their nicknames. A clever safeguard against occasional slips of the tongue and hesitations is the fact that most of the characters don’t speak their native languages for a large part of the film, so they sometimes have to search for the right expression for a moment. On the roof, potential conflict is indicated by drawing attention to Boxer’s criminal past. In the café, the relationship between Victoria and Sonne is deepened through authentically intimate dialogue, legitimising the girl’s subsequent decision to join in the action to come. When the narrative begins to conform to familiar genre formulas, it loses steam and nearly all of its potential to somehow surprise us. One cliché follows another (the need to find a substitute accomplice, the engine failing to start, the gunshot wound not revealed until long after the impact), the absolute majority of scenes last longer than is necessary, the initially rather likable characters behave increasingly like idiots (which, from a certain moment should clearly be partially explained by the fact that they are under the influence of drugs), and the predictable ending is delayed by a number of unnecessary feints that in no way deepen the characters’ psychology or expand the film’s slight intellectual foundations. Despite the impressive technical execution (the cinematographer rightly gets priority over the director in the closing credits) and the skilful guidance of our attention by alternating between greater and lesser depth of focus, the film is not engaging enough to work as an example of intense “experiential” cinema, nor is it suitably rich in motifs or appropriately specific in the setting or characters (the protagonists barely have enough character traits for a two-and-a-half-hour film) to be taken as a statement about today’s multicultural Berlin or Generation Y. Victoria has bigger ambitions and a bigger budget, but in the end, it’s an admirable failure.
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This is a triumph of form over content. Hats off to the creativity and all the preparations that had to precede making this movie to make it all come together in one coherent continuous shot. Unfortunately, what makes this movie incredibly underwhelming is the behaviour of characters, who make the most stupid decisions possible just to give some direction to the melodrama. Plus, since the movie makes it so the audience is locked in with these idiots for a full one-hundred and forty minutes, the audience is then fully able to feel the effects of both their incomprehensible actions and the unnecessarily overlong running time more intensely.
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For a concept involving the authentic night-time doings of a few characters in ordinary locations of Berlin, 140 minutes is a lot. The first half of this film drags a bit in exceedingly trivial scenes and dialogue. But what happens later is all the more surprising and gripping, especially if you know nothing at all about the plot. The troubles come in hints, and we suspect and fear them because the protagonist doesn’t deserve them. This is a very well made, emotive and thoroughly intensifying “one-shot” film with good acting performances.
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