Victoria (2015)

Directed by Sebastian Schipper. Starring Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yiğit, Max Mauff, André Hennicke.

After leaving a nightclub in Berlin, Costa’s eponymous expat ends up in the company of four young men. They walk, talk, imbibe, smoke, and commit a petty crime or two over the course of the late night/early morning, but Victoria eventually realizes these men have a “debt” to pay to the wrong sort of people, and her life is in grave danger. Filmed in a single continuous take, director Sebastian Schipper, who also co-produced and co-wrote the loose script structure, has devised a gimmick that’s easy to forget whenever the film is immersive, impossible not to recognize whenever the mood and/or conversation turns prosaic and noticeably “unscripted” (the actors improvised much of their dialogue). The story had enough surprises to have succeeded in the bold, risky technique’s absence—without the benefit of artful cutting, the pile-up of implausibilities is easier for the viewer to discern, and a potentially riveting two hours becomes protracted by about twenty additional minutes of noodling, excessive material. Granted, that style of awkwardness gives the escapist thrills and poignant central attraction more rough-around-the-edges validity, but it delays the climb and saps away some of the kinetic energy. Admirable for its virtuosity, and engaging enough to forgive, but I still couldn’t help but wonder what could have been. Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is the dexterous man behind the camera.

73/100