The audacious one-shot wonder “Victoria” is a masterful feat of execution, but the long take is so much more than a nifty trick — it’s an absolutely necessary part of the storytelling that colors in the themes explored in this wild film. Helmed masterfully by Sebastian Schipper, “Victoria” delves into the nightclubs of Berlin, and spills out onto the streets, before snowballing into a tragic crime tale, a beautifully rendered mashup of “Before Sunrise” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” That this all happens over the course of the film’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour run time underlines how quickly things can change, how quickly things can go from innocent fun to horribly wrong.
Our titular heroine, Victoria (Laia Costa), is a young girl from Madrid, spending a few months kicking around in Germany. On her way out of a club at 4 a.m., she meets Sonne (Frederick Lau), who charms her into joining him and his crew — Boxer (Franz Rogowski), Blinker (Burak Yigit) and Fuss (Max Mauff) — for an early morning nightcap. Victoria, hungry for adventure and companionship, joins in with their drunken, sloppy street antics.
Victoria and Sonne’s flirtation develops as the group kicks back on a rooftop with beers and joints, and wends its way to the cafe she is due to open at 7 a.m. All too quickly though, Victoria, with her sweet and nurturing nature, ends up agreeing to drive the guys to a meeting with Boxer’s prison friend Andi, where they are pressed into committing a bank robbery. While the heist seems to go smoothly enough, it’s the aftermath that spirals out of control, the situation rapidly degenerating before our eyes with a speed that startles both the viewer and Victoria herself.
Costa has the gamine qualities of Chantal Goya in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Feminin,” a similarly disruptive take on the boy-meets-girl narrative trope. Lau is a heavy-browed brutish charmer, using his gift of gab to draw in Victoria, and keep his crew in line, until he suddenly can’t control the situation as he likes. The romance between the two is a modern, street-sweet, rough and tumble affair. Aesthetically and thematically, “Victoria” feels similar to Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Pusher” trilogy, in its exploration of a criminal underworld captured with a flowing handheld immediacy.
Schipper favors natural light and sound for the majority of the film’s proceedings, which at times are loose and improvisational, with conversations in German and broken English fading in and out. During some of the film’s more chaotic, joyful moments, the sound fades out to let Nils Frahm’s wistful score take center stage in the soundtrack. On screen, we see the characters wildly dancing, running or jumping in moments of adrenaline-fueled joy. It’s almost as if the film is already mourning the fun they’re still having.
Because it is in real time, you experience along with the main characters as they go from strangers to friends to partners in crime to lovers to fugitives. It happens shockingly quickly, the narrative turning on a dime, without the aid of editing to compress or elide time. By the end, we have shared everything Victoria has — extreme moments including happiness, fear, and tragedy. It’s a remarkable feat of cinematic execution and a stunning emotional journey.
“Victoria” — 3 stars
No MPAA rating
Running time: 2:18
Opens: Friday at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., www.musicboxtheatre.com.
