Victoria is a carefree and somewhat desperate girl, one we first meet dancing alone in an after hours club. She is energetic, full of life, and yet in a failed attempt to buy the bartender a drink, we learn she is alone. As a city girl she is foreign in more ways than one. She is a recent transplant from Madrid, and in her 3 months of living in the city she has yet to make friends.
Leaving the bar, she runs into three young men, carefree and in a way the sort of people Victoria has been looking for. They roam the city, talking, wandering aimlessly in a city that is silent and deserted. They steal beer from a sleeping store clerk. They climb to the roof of their apartment building to get a better view. Sonne, the man who seems to be oldest and wisest, takes Victoria across the street to her cafe where she works (she opens at 7am, so the night has a time frame).
For the first third of the film, I recalled several movies that have found success in the conversation of strangers, mainly "Before Sunrise." The candid way these 5 characters address each other and interact was real to the point of being a documentary. In small ticks and one-liners, we learn so much about these nomads: where they've been, where they're going...
This is not to say the film is a slow-paced drama. In fact the conflict of the story (which I won't spoil even though the film has a more limited release than anything I have yet to see this year) propels Victoria down a labyrinth of mystery and growing suspense. From the beginning to the end, the arc is so wide and vast that to compare the front of the film to the end is almost like watching a different movie, altogether.
I can't figure why a movie as accomplished as this is receiving little to no attention. The performance of Laia Costa as Victoria is nothing short of astounding. As a worry-free and timid girl, she undergoes a change so revolutionary that it's next to impossible to imagine how it was done all in one single take.
Yes, the other accomplishment of the movie: it's filmed without a single cut and spans nearly 140 minutes. This makes it without a doubt the longest single-take movie ever made by a mile, and surely the most elaborate (remember "Russian Ark," the single-take movie that took place entirely in a museum?). From bars to rooftops to cars and everything in between, this is stuff of movie magic that I cannot even begin to comprehend the technicalities behind the making of it. The accuracy of every actor and cameraman involved is so watertight that is makes the wizardry behind "Birdman" look like a walk in the park.
It's easy to praise a film for being a "gimmick," but with 'Victoria' the accomplishments span more than just the camerawork. Here is a story that is exciting, emotional, and completely immersive. The use of no cuts only adds to the suspense, and the actual run time in relation to the faultless camerawork is something that perhaps can never be surpassed. This is one I won't soon be forgetting.
*the film was deemed ineligible for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars last year due to it's large concentration of English spoken. Too bad...
(Awards potential: Best Foreign Film, Best Actress (Costa), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography)
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