VICTORIA

2015; directed by Sebastian Schipper; story by Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Sebastian Schipper and Eike Frederik Schulz; 138 mins

In a one-take movie, the cinematography gets praised to the hilt… and for good reason! Watch a movie which has actually, honestly been done in one single shot and it’s almost like the whole Bear Grylls thing; “Wow! Have you seen how extreme that guy is?” Well, the other guy did it with a camera on his shoulder. With all due respect to the actors in this movie, more of whom later. Nevertheless, it did strike me that the sound department really didn’t get their dues because, whether this is recorded live, post-synched or a mixture of the two, that’s just as impressive as anything else!

Berlin. Victoria is a young, Spanish woman enjoying herself at a club before she starts her morning shift at a local cafe. On her way out, she gets entangled with a group of young guys – Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuß – who are being thrown out. Taking an immediate fancy to her, Sonne invites her to come and party with them as it’s Fuß’s birthday. She likes them enough that she agrees to a drink with them before she goes to work. Hanging out with the boys, she really likes them, they’re brazen but they’re not dicks and maybe there is something between her and Sonne. Just as she’s about to take her leave of them, though, their shit changes and before the sun rises, her whole world will have flipped upside down.

First of all, I like the character of Victoria because she goes out on the piss with every intention of going to work. Something I hate is people who call in sick when they’ve been partying. One, single good principle I learned as a teenager was, if you’re going out and you know you’re working the next day, you go into work the next day! So, Victoria is already a good person in my books. Victoria, the movie, just about gets away with its plot developments which do hinge on believing that Victoria will go off with the guys whichever direction they take. It stretches credulity a little but not so much that it upsets the ever-mounting tension. The dynamics of and between her and the boys are set up really solidly. Sonne, Boxer and Blinker as portrayed by Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski and Burak Yiǧit, are rowdy and gobby but they’re never aggressive and they readily show their vulnerability. Fuß is pissed out of his brains, so he’s no bother. Victoria (and there aren’t enough superlatives in the world to describe Laia Costa’s work in this, suffice to say, hers is one of the top 10 performances of the decade) as we’ve seen, is a raver with a work ethic. She’s the kind of woman who’ll work after partying that she’s good fun but level-headed. That first forty-fifty minutes has a perfect Richard Linklater feel (Before Sunrise, obviously with hints of Dazed and Confused). So, when the crunch moment comes and the movie goes much more Paul Greengrass, then we have invested in these characters as we would in a domestic drama. In fact, in mentioning Greengrass, as far Victoria‘s genre credentials go, how often outside of the Bourne films, have we seen a decent romance in an action movie?

Let’s get down to brass tacks: the single-take movie. Tony Zhou‘s comment that long takes are; “… probably the most jerked-off-to type of shot in filmmaking…” is absolutely true. They’re wet dreams come true for chin-strokers. In something like Birdman, it’s begging for your attention. However, Victoria really feels, to me anyway, like it was one take because director and team felt that that approach was absolutely the right way to tell the story. I really didn’t sit there noticing the single take all the time. That’s a lot to do with the aforementioned efforts of the cast and the writers, setting up an engaging story with characters you want to hear from and grow to care about. The single take can be the worst kind of posturing filmmaking and yet strangely, Victoria – which has actually done it for real rather than surreptitiously-but-not-really stitching a lot of takes together – the film that genuinely is a oner, is the least self-aggrandising of the lot!

The fact of the matter is, it’s when you go looking for cracks in the armour and you can’t see reflections or doors obviously left open that the movie laughs in your stupid face! It laughed in my stupid face. That is as much a testament to cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen‘s astonishing feat as his poor bloody arms afterwards (also those of boom ops, Tom Dittrich and Mirko Höpfner). He keeps the camera moving just enough but never too much in the more intimate scenes. It follows action and takes a backseat when there is none. In one key scene, the camera stays on Victoria and her emotional experience rather than chasing after the big action set piece. In those car scenes, there may well be a camera in the rear-view mirror but I wasn’t in the least bit interested in jotting down goofs for IMDb (I never am anyway, I think those people are cunts) because the movie had me in the palm of its hand. There are instances where we see the shadow of a camera but in that length of time and with the immersion present throughout, it doesn’t matter. It had to happen. Better a great, gung-ho movie with a couple of mistakes than a bland, mainstream piece of shit with pristine edges.

Victoria is a real triumph and it’ll stay with me for a long time. It’s a successful hangout movie which morphs into an equally successful, taut crime movie. It maybe goes on slightly too long but I doubt that tentative caveat will survive a second viewing. One thing final I’ll say is, returning to my initial point: the cast and camera crew have done a genuinely extraordinary thing which will never be equalled but don’t forget that sound crew. Invisible filmmaking…