Review of Victoria (2015) by Stanley F — 09 Apr 2016

Here's a film simple in its ambition- to draw you into an encounter between a lost girl and four lost boys and their tragic adventure. She is Victoria, recently rejected from a Madrid Classical Piano Conservatory after giving her life to becoming a concert pianist - they are Berliner Street boys, or rather young men, attached to each other by their desperate street code and fiercely loyal past any point of stupidity.

The film is notable for being shot in one single take and this gives the viewer a sense of intimacy and "belonging" to the group - the film follows Victoria at every moment as she falls into the gang's world, which is about to unravel.

Sonne is the kind-faced gang-member who is chatting Victoria up with her full consent. His mates are by degrees high, violent or crazy but their bonded behaviour is well caught by the dialogue and action. You feel a degree of dread for Victoria as the story unfolds but she plays along with full consent and is unwittingly a major cause of the unravelling of the gangmembers' lives as they pull off a heist to satsify a prison-debt owed to a gangster. This involves the best anti-car chase I have ever seen in cinema as the gang escape the crime-scene.

There are some touching moments in this film- Sonne , for me, was well acted by Frederic Lau as the boy/man who charms Victoria- there was an element of vulnerability about him that he caught very well, a little reminiscent of Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront".

The film falls into melodrama as the heist unfolds, and you are either gripped by the unfolding, or a little bored - there were four in our party and the score was 2:2. Depends how much you care for the protagonists I guess, and how much you are drawn in to their chaotic world.

There's a lot to commend this film, but it felt raw to me, in the sense of unfinished, which I guess is a downside of "all-in-one-take" - but there is no denying the cinematographic tour de force here or the many moments where the actors /writers got it just right. I think a good editor could have improved the film for me, but that would have defeated its raison d'etre.