SummaryVictoria (Laia Costa), a young woman from Madrid, meets four local Berliners outside a nightclub. Sonne and his friends promise to show her a good time and the real side of the city. But these lads have gotten themselves into hot water: they owe someone a dangerous favor that requires repaying that evening. As Victoria’s flirtation with ...
SummaryVictoria (Laia Costa), a young woman from Madrid, meets four local Berliners outside a nightclub. Sonne and his friends promise to show her a good time and the real side of the city. But these lads have gotten themselves into hot water: they owe someone a dangerous favor that requires repaying that evening. As Victoria’s flirtation with ...
So much more than a one-take gimmick movie, Victoria is a stunning cinematic achievement. Full of twists that feel authentic and believable characters, it grips from the first compelling frame to the last.
Sebastian Schipper’s flawless masterpiece is a potent reminder of why I love cinema. It expertly evokes the entire gamut of human emotion, and its actors have some of the best chemistry that I have ever seen in a film. More than any film this year, “Victoria” is best viewed without knowing too much about the plot. The film consists of a single, 140 minute take, and yet it ends so far away from where it begins that it is easy to forget that the story unfolds in real time: A young woman from Spain meets a group of German guys as she is leaving a club in Berlin. You get the sense that she’s lonely, bored, and frustrated with her life, and so she continues to hang out with them, even when things don’t seem quite right. She’s drawn to Sonne, the charming young man who initially approaches her: most of the first half of the film shows their carefree and playful interaction. The audience falls in love with the characters at the same time as the two main characters fall in love with one another... And then something happens, and would Victoria be willing to do just one, small favor? There is nothing gimmicky about the fact that the film is a single shot – actually one shot, not edited to appear that way: it’s a decision that thrusts the audience into the film, in the same way that Victoria is thrust into the events of the story. At first blush the plot might seem absurd, and yet, emotionally and logically, each sequence seems to follow inescapably from the sequence that precedes it, and the viewer is left with the sense that none of the characters ever quite grasp the gravity of the decisions that they are making. “Victoria” is powerfully well made – it’s my favorite film of this year, and one of my favorite films of any year.
What a great great movie! And I'm not saying that just because of the technical brilliance (which is already impressive enough). I'm saying it because you, as a viewer, really get to be in the movie, with the characters, in their lives, and follow them around, like you were an invisible observer. It's an extraordinary experience, and about how many movies can you say that?
This first section is so charming and well-observed, and creates such real chemistry between the two terrific leads, that it's almost a shame that it's there to invest us in them just so the fast-paced genre flick to come has an anchor.
The acting, especially by Costa, is first rate. Exuding both a childlike openness and a tendency toward the recklessness of young adulthood, the actress backs up even her character’s most questionable choices with conviction.
It stretches character credibility, and resorts too much to criminal-underworld cliché and the driving pace of its own perpetual motion, which curiously does nothing to paper over the longueurs in certain over-stretched sequences. You come out on a high of sorts – but it soon fades.
أعتقد أن فيلم فيكتوريا واحد من الأفلام القليلة في اوروبا التي تجذب الانتباه منذ بدايتها حتى النهاية، لأسباب تتعلق بطبيعة الإخراج (ون شوت) وثانياً اعتباره فيلماً شبابياً خالصاً، وثالثاً هو فكرته المميزة جداً التي في ظاهرها قضية إجرامية ولكن بتصوري باطنها هو الخير البشري الذي يتحطم على صخرة القانون الوضعي والذي أنتجته أصلاً امؤسسات البشرية وطورته.
قصة الفيلم هي قصة فيكتوريا الشابة الغريبة عن المدينة والتي تحاول إيجاد علاقة لتؤنس وحدتها في مشهد اولي وهو نادي ليلي، ثم تخرج لتلتقي بأربعة شبان المانيين يشربون البيرة وتبدأ الحكاية ويشعر الجميع انم في عمق قضية غامضة لسرقة مصرف.
في نهاية المطاف يموت الجميع وتبقى فيكتوريا حية.
بتصوري الفيلم عالج مشكلة مجتمع كامل داخل اوروبا من خلال قصة قصيرة .. بأن الشر او ما نظنه شراً ليس سوى طريقة اخرى في التعبير عن الخير الذي بداخلنا وما ظهوره سوى للقانون الاجتماعي المهمل للإنسان.
فيكتوريا فيلم من نوعية الشد العصبي والانفعال الهادئ والمتوتر بأن اللحظة.
وهو من أحد المفضلات لدي
I feel this movie generally deserves a higher rating. It is a stunning directorial feat to shoot a feature-length film in one single take but what really makes this movie great is how the story fits with this style of film-making: A never-ending thrillride through a kaleidoscope of human emotion, constantly pushing forward with the confusing erratic dynamic of life itself. It is simply a blast, and you should see it.
This movie messed up my head beyond repair, i lived in Berlin for almost a year i kinda felt like i was there, the cinematography & the storyline is just too perfect, its too good to be true, in other words super realism.
I went into Victoria with the knowledge that the whole thing is captured in one take, which is pretty impressive considering the fact that for the whole 2 hours and 20 minutes, the actress actually does a pretty good job of maintaining a realistic performance.
**** whole thing is way too drawn out, and obviously since it's one take, there are super long filler sections which aren't emotionally interesting or significant, it's literally just sections of the characters driving or walking to more interesting set-pieces or scenes. In a normal movie, moving from say a nightclub to a rooftop store scene is edited out because it bring you to the best part quickly. Here, the technical trick erodes the cogency of the story and leaves us looking at people just rambling along or driving in silence. Does that make for a good movie if we ignore the 'wow' factor of it being taken in a single take?
Having said that, there are actually a few interesting scenes towards the end which actually felt tense, and the cinematic style was pretty effective in making that tension felt. However for me, this is no Breaking Bad level of tension, the payoff isn't really worth the wait as the story can't really evolve into something more complicated within the rigid format within which it's allowed to operate.
Final thoughts: This isn't a 'bad' movie, but it's not a great one either. In some parts though, it's just flat out boring, and being long, it just feels like it's fiddling with its thumbs, as we wait for the characters to travel to another place to do something more enthralling than what they're doing right now. Maybe that's why editing really is so crucial, and it really shows with this film. If you like the super-organic feel of characters in a film though, you might enjoy this one.
What a waste of time! The first half is utterly boring, none of the characters inspires any sympathy, and Victoria's behavior is totally absurd and makes no sense at all. I waited the whole time for some kind of punchline, that would justify the gushing reviews, but it never came.