Review: Victoria

Victoria (15)

Germany 2015 138 minutes Subtitles  Dir: Sebastian Schipper Starring: Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yigit, Max Mauff, André Hennicke

There’s no getting away from the fact that this is a stunt movie in the tradition of Hitchcock’s (cheating) Rope, Gustavo Hernandez’s The Silent House and Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark. Flaunting the one-take conceit makes it hard not to be distracted by contemplation of the impressive logistics involved in pulling off a continuous, hand-held 138 minute shot in multiple locations. A cynic might even consider all this focus on how the film was made to be a classic piece of misdirection, drawing our attention away from credulity-stretching plot developments. But oddly enough, as implausibility mounts, initial improvisational flabbiness is jettisoned and the film succeeds in tightening its grip.

We first meet the eponymous Victoria (Costa) gyrating blissfully in a Berlin nightclub. A free-spirited young Spaniard seemingly alone in the German capital, she leaves the club in the small hours only to be accosted by a quartet of drunken, laddish locals. After a bit of larking about, she agrees to go with them to smoke some pot on a rooftop. That might seem a tad unwise, but is nothing compared to what happens next. It turns out that one of their number, a skinhead who goes by the name of Boxer (Rogowski), is an ex-con who owes a huge debt to a fellow former jailbird for protecting his bottom in prison. Now that debt is being called in by the snarling, scenery-chewing wrong ‘un from central casting who demands that they carry out a heist. Like, immediately.

In order to make much of this work, it’s necessary to buy the idea that Victoria is unable to speak any German, despite apparently running a café, and so is largely unaware of what’s being plotted under her nose. Her main interaction is with another of the youths, who styles himself Sonne (Lau). He comes across as being marginally less of a dick than his compatriots and converses with Victoria in broken English, leading to what can only be described as a whirlwind romance, telescoped by self-imposed necessity into a couple of hours.

Director Sebastian Schipper’s cast reportedly worked from a 12-page script, improvising most of the dialogue. This certainly shows in the first, rather formless half of the film, which is at its best in its rare quieter moments. But once the plot kicks in, the urgent real-time approach pays dividends as the action races along, giving us little opportunity to pause and examine the plot holes and improbable, accelerated character arcs. There’s no question that this is technically impressive, high-wire stuff, but it might have so much better with a little more going on under the bonnet.