Victoria
Sebastian Schipper’s exhilarating heist thriller is stunt filmmaking of a very high order.
There’s a new one-shot wonder in town Sebastian Schipper’s heart-in-mouth heist thriller “Victoria” isn’t performing any high-tech sleight of hand. Genuinely shot across 22 locations in a single bobbing, weaving, 134-minute take, this exhilarating tale of a winsome Spanish nightclubber who finds herself spontaneously caught up in a bank robbery during one wild night on the Berlin tiles is undeniably a stunt, but one suffused with a surprising degree of grace and emotional authenticity.
With its very opening image, Schipper’s film makes an unsubtle but effective grab for viewers’ attention, as the dizzying white scintillation of a dance-floor strobe light envelops the frame. Photosensitive epileptics should consider themselves warned, but it’s “Victoria” itself that, after a fashion, enters a state of seizure from this point, its impulses and reflexes in hot, compelling, irrational disarray. Rather like its in-over-her-head heroine, the narrative swerves from a state of composed realism to one of high-stakes, head-spinning absurdity with nary a moment to breathe or ponder its actions.
World Premier at Berlinale 2015
Article by Guy Lodge in Film Critic
Production
Crew
With
Editor: Olivia Neergaard-Holm
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Produced by Jan Dressler