Considering the entire movie Victoria was shot in a single take, even though it does not serve any purpose to the film except becoming an exercise in technique, I will attempt to recreate the experience in this review by writing it entirely in a single sentence so as to demonstrate the futility of the exercise which the movie undertakes, the premise of which is about Victoria (Laia Costa), a Spanish girl in Berlin who for reasons briefly explained in the film is looking for a wild night as a rebellion against the strict regimental childhood she has had, but picks the worst possible group of guys to do this with, not even waking up to the reality of the situation when it turns to crime (involving a stolen car, guns, a bank robbery and… cocaine!), thereby completely shedding off any audience sympathy Victoria had to begin with, making it that much more difficult to care for her or anyone else in the movie, which renders the entire setup of the film an excuse for the experiment that it really is, the disconnect making us acutely aware of the presence of the cameraman with the characters all the time throughout each scene further reinforcing the fakeness of it all, none of it being more jarring and abysmal than the deliberate walking away of a character (with the camera following), while the other actor off-screen is prepped with the required make-up for all the blood we see a few minutes later, or even when Victoria walks half way into a room leaving the door open then turns around to walk back to the door to shut it (allowing the necessary space for the cameraman to come into the room), but all of these flaws could be forgiven if the movie itself was intriguing or thrilling, which it neither is, or if it was innovative with the single-shot technique like Fish & Cat (Iranian film that played at DIFF 2013) which takes the method to dizzying heights with its time-bending narrative and multiple perspectives, without which Victoria lack of creativity is compounded by the movies’ 140 minute runtime making it laborious for the viewer, the irony of it all being that the best version of this movie would be one with many cuts to “trim the fat”, making it shorter and tighter, but importantly giving it a meaningful pace by not denying it pauses and breaks – just like this review.
Rating: 
