Victoria (2015) (German & English language)

Review

138min

Genre:       Crime, Drama, Thriller

Director:    Sebastian Schipper

Cast:         Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski…and more

Writers:     Sebastian Schipper, Olivia Neergaard-Holm… and more

-Synopsis-

On a night out; a lonely young Spanish girl sparks-up a potential romance and friendship with a Berliner and his rogue friends, but her hazy dream turns into a nightmare when things take a sudden criminal turn in this German one-shot ultra-realist crime thriller indie.

Actor turned writer/director Sebastian Schipper’s film is finally released in the UK after making waves across the continent last year, and this fluid naturalistic little drama does not disappoint in showcasing what independent European cinema has to offer.

‘Victoria’ is essentially a film about how chance meetings and everyday decisions can have a life-changing impact, Schipper and his team deserve the recognition they’ve received for successfully shooting a 2 hour film in one continuous take, a remarkable technical and logistical achievement.

But it’s when combined with the impressive performances and ultra-naturalistic dialogue, most of which was improvised, that ‘Victoria’ really comes into its own as a flowing movie-going experience that’s frenetic when it needs to be, but considered at other times… and always moves along. Ultimately it feels like you’re a fly-on-the-wall watching a typical group of European twenty-somethings on a night out, when things take an tense and unexpected dark turn… and you can’t keep your eyes off it.

Spanish actress Laia Costa stars as “Victoria” in a breakthrough English-speaking performance; alongside an all-German cast of young actors led by Frederick Lau in a film with narrative and stylistic echoes of 1998’s ‘Run Lola Run’, which is unsurprising as director Schipper featured as an actor in the 90s German indie classic.

‘Victoria’ isn’t quite an instant “foreign language” classic though; it only ever hints at the depth of its characters, and although she is portrayed as strong and more complicit than a victim of her circumstance, Victoria’s motivations for her actions are vague at best and non-existent at worse.

But despite the inherent limitations of a small budget and logistics of a one-take shooting structure; ‘Victoria’ is a triumph of independent filmmaking, which draws the audience in and keeps them tensely anticipating what will happen to characters with a greater realism than most of mainstream cinema.

The Bottom Line…

A burgeoning friendship drama that turns into a tense crime thriller, ‘Victoria’ is both an impressive technical achievement and a captivating piece of entertainment, another welcome example of what independent cinema has to offer and well worth your consideration.

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Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Run Lola Run (1998)

After her boyfriend’s petty criminal activities go desperately wrong, Lola runs all over town in a desperate mission to find 100,000 Deutsche Marks to save his life in this 90s alternative indie German thriller.

Directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu and Herbert Knaup among others.

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