Category: World Cinema
Language: German-English-Spanish
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Running time: 1hour 33 minutes
Victoria is, more than everything else that it is, a technical overhaul of conventional filmmaking. The two hour 38 minute film is a blazing dramatic explosion that unfolds at 4 am in the morning to precisely 2.38 hours, the running time of the camera.
Bagging a handful of awards, the film featured in the World Cinema category in IFFK 2015, is garnering much praise for the incredible feat for which it takes credit.
The place is a pub in Berlin. The film opens to hypnotic blinding lights inside the pub, where Victoria is moving to the rhythm. Once out of the pub, she responds to a bunch of guys who were being kept in check by the bouncers of the club—Sonne, Boxer, Blink and Fuss.
She’s from Madrid and the boys from Berlin. A spirited Victoria mingles with them easily and slowly starts to flirt back with Sonne. Awhile later, she is prepared to get back to the café she works in. Sonne goes along with her, and an unlikely acquaintance starts to gain momentum and depth when they talk, laugh and play the piano.
The action begins here, with Fuss getting overly drunk and unable to accompany Boxer as the third person to settle a deal. Victoria gets pulled in, and what started out as a fun interaction suddenly boomerangs on her as she finds herself on a run with the guys to save their life.
Shot without artificial lights, the camera soaks up the conflict, adoration and agony combining them into a single brilliant force of urgency; to flee and find light at the end of the tunnel.
The characters are etched well—Victoria who lives on the edge, Sonne the boisterous flirt that takes to Victoria, the quick tempered, emotional Boxer, funny Blink and fussy Fuss.
Not many movies have hit the screens with the said technical accomplishment coupled with a racy story; romance, sparkles, humour running into the snarling reality of gangsters without no cuts—Victoria gleams while dashing through infernal blackholes.
Star factors
» Technical skill coupled with great screenplay acted out to brilliant effects, it’s a must-watch.