Review: Victoria

Victoria is a German film directed by Sebastian Schipper. The film is a Berlin-set heist/caper movie focusing on four young German men and one young Spanish woman (Victoria) who, after meeting outside a nightclub, subsequently end up stealing fifty thousand euro from a local bank. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, for several different reasons.I found that the one long, uninterrupted take of the film was both mesmerising, effective, and, ultimately, rather subtle. I didn’t feel like it was in any way particularly flashy or obvious, instead only acting as a means to tell the story. I also found that it gave a truly wonderful sense of realism to the film, making you honestly believe that what you are seeing is really happening.I also found the pace of the movie to be very well done, apart from a few places early on in the picture which did, at least for me, drag somewhat. But apart from this, I found the movie to rarely, if ever, feel like a chore, instead feeling both engaging and often thrilling.I thoroughly enjoyed the characters. All the actors in the film worked exceedingly well together, and had superb, almost natural chemistry, particularly between the characters of Victoria and Sonne.  I also really liked the development that these characters had in the early stages of the film, when the bank robbery has yet to take place. We’re just allowed to watch them interact with one another, like friends, as well as learn a bit more about them, which I felt gave them all greater depth, and consequently made me care about a large portion of them once the heist had taken place. I also found the dialogue between the characters to be very natural, realistic, and often funny. There was, in fact, quite a lot of humour in this film, which I enjoyed immensely, and which I felt gave the picture a welcome levity.There were several beautifully shot sequences and scenes interspersed throughout the filmgoersrNote. The score also was very effective, and very often entrancing, with there being two scenes in particular in which only the music is heard, and which were, in truth, mesmerising.Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Victoria. I liked and cared about the characters, I enjoyed the chemistry between them, and the humour of the picture. I loved the single take format of the movie; I loved its realism, and its very nice cinematography. The only real issues I had with it were that it does drag someone at the beginning, taking a bit of time to get going, but apart from that, I really, really enjoyed it.