Film Review: Victoria (*SPOILERS)
Last night, I watched a German drama film on Netflix recommended to me via WatchMojo. The movie in question would be Victoria, which came out two years ago in 2015.
Victoria tells the story of a young Spanish woman (Laia Costa) who, after recently moving to Berlin, spends a night out in the city’s underground (not a euphemism) club scene. She then meets four rowdy young men who befriend her. The men then invite Victoria to hang out with her.
Just from the descriptions alone, Victoria seems like a rather basic film. But there’s something quite distinctive that the movie has to offer; the entire movie (all 138 minutes of it) is entirely shot in one take. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon, with similar films being Gaspar Noe’s 2002 shocker, Irreversible, and Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark.
Regardless of whether or not it’s been done before, the credit should be given where it is due. Seeing as it took 3 two—hour takes for this film to be made, everything in Victoria falls perfectly into place. You get the sense you are actually there with regular people who are having authentic conversations. The friendship between Victoria and one of the four men, Sonne (Frederick Lau) is gracefully cultivated and the chemistry between them is given ample time to develop, even if the screen time they share moved rather slowly at times.
After Sonne takes Victoria back to the cafe where she works, another one of the men, the gritty-looking Boxer (Franz Rogowski), storms in and demands Sonne’s help in an unspecified job that must be carried immediately. After stealing a car, the four men hastily depart, only to return due to the fact that their friend Fuss (Max Mauff) is passed out from drinking and therefore unable to perform the duties the mysterious job requires.
As a last resort, Boxer orders Sonne to recruit Victoria in driving the men to their job, as it requires four people to complete. The reluctant Sonne asks Victoria, who accepts. The five then make their way over to an empty basement-level garage where they are confronted by a series of gun-wielding mob members. The four are then assigned to rob a bank, as a means for Boxer to repay the mob leader, Andi (Andre Hennicke) for protecting him during a stint in jail.
The film’s brightest moments come from this point on. From the very minute the van leaves the garage to embark on the robbery, we are left in total suspense as to what will occur next. And every bit of the action is raw, unflinching. It’s another strong suit of director Sebastian Schipper’s method of shooting the whole film in one take. The viewer is forced to engage with the characters as if they are actual people right there in front of them.
The robbery occurs and the four hastily depart from the scene, and wildly party in the same underground nightclub from before. Their celebration is short lived when police discover their getaway vehicle and apprehend Fuss. The gang attempts to flee on foot, but police officers in street clothes close in on them and in the ensuing chaos, Boxer and Blinker (Barak Yigit) are shot and killed.
In a bizarre choice of actions, Victoria and Sonne scramble into a nearby apartment complex and take a young couple hostage in their apartment and decide to steal their infant child and pose as a couple themselves in order to escape the building from police, which somehow works. After safely leaving the infant in the foyer of a shop, Victoria and Sonne then sneak into a cab and ride to a posh hotel where they check into a room. There, it is revealed that Sonne has been shot by police and is dying. Victoria spends the next few minutes calling for an ambulance, before giving Sonne a tearful goodbye as he succumbs to his injuries. Finally, Victoria walks out of the hotel unnoticed and gets lost in the city, presumably getting away with robbery and a whole bucket list of other serious crimes.
Victoria is one of those movies that’s almost impossible to look away from, because really, what choice does the viewer have when literally every second of the story is being played out in dramatic detail right before them? It is truly edge-of-your-seat suspense of the highest order. And what I really noticed when I was watching this film was that the entire time, I wanted Victoria to escape, even though she had willingly injected herself into another person’s risky affairs. Both her and the other characters were fun to be around and watch, and the emotions build up when one by one Victoria’s new friends get picked off by the police. By the end, when Victoria escapes the scene before authorities can arrive, there was a feeling of satisfaction, as if this was all just one wild cruel chapter in this impressionable young woman’s life, that she narrowly avoided having to face the consequences for.
