Victoria is a 2015 German drama film directed by Sebastian Schipper, starring Laia Costa and Frederick Lau. It is noteworthy for being shot in a single continuous take.
A young and lonely Spanish woman staying in Berlin finds her flirtation with a local guy turn potentially deadly as their night out with his friends reveals a dangerous secret.
This film provides examples of:
- Alone in a Crowd: This is how we meet Victoria, trying to enjoy herself at a busy club but having no luck with meeting anyone. No one dances with her on the dance floor, an apathetic bartender refuses to engage with her, and the girls in the bathroom angrily bark at her to get in line.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Victoria speaks English to all the Germans she meets as a lingua franca because she doesn't speak German. The men she's with generally speak German to each other, causing them to switch back and forth between languages depending on who they're addressing.
- Bittersweet Ending: A little bit more bitter than sweet, also overlapping with No Ending due to many hanging threads. Victoria manages to make it out with the money, but Sonne, Blinker and Boxer are dead. Fuß will likely be interrogated by the police after waking up and Andi, the gangster who the group had to rob money in the first place, hasn't been repaid and threatened to take Victoria hostage if he wasn't. And Victoria never opened her cafe.
- Brick Joke: Boxer has a hard time getting into the escape car on their way to the meeting. At the meeting, Andi forces the group to rehearse the robbery, and Boxer gets embarrassingly stuck in the car.
- Character Tic: Victoria pulls her hair back into a ponytail (and removes it) about a dozen times over the course of the film.
- Children as Pawns: Sonne and Victoria hijack someone's baby to pose as innocent parents of a newborn on their way out of the police-surrounded building.
- Death Is Dramatic: Victoria's dramatic crying fit when Sonne dies on the hotel bed.
- The Driver: Victoria accepts this role after Sonne and Boxer implore her to, though she doesn't seem to understand the full implications until much later.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Due to the Extremely Short Timespan, Victoria becomes extremely emotionally invested in a group of people she's just met. She insists on being their getaway driver for a bank robbery for people she's known for about an hour. She refuses to abandon Sonne and falls to pieces after his death despite having met him only two hours ago.
- Establishing Character Moment: Victoria is introduced dancing by herself, getting rebuffed in an awkward attempt at connecting with a bartender, and then leaving a club alone, establishing her as a lonely person.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The film takes in Real Time over a little more than two hours.
- Film Noir: To the extent that it was the closer for 2017's Noir City film festival.
- Hassle-Free Hotwire: Boxer is an expert in hot-wiring cars. Whenever the escape car needs to be turned on, he simply leans over from the passenger seat and starts it up in a few seconds by fiddling around with the wires.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Boxer sacrifices himself in a police shootout so that Victoria and Sonne can escape.
- Hidden Depths: Victoria reveals herself to be an exceptionally talented pianist who trained her whole life on the piano only to fall just short during her conservatorship.
- Hope Spot: Victoria and Sonne escape the police and make it to a hotel with the money, only for Victoria tor realize that Sonne's been shot and is dying.
- Idiot Ball: The group fails to ditch the car used in the crime (and even return to it) and leave one of their intoxicated co-conspirators inside, go out partying in a club after the robbery instead of laying low, and continue to stay together after it's obvious that the police are looking for a group of young male criminals.
- I'm Cold... So Cold...: Sonne utters this line in his final moments at the hotel room.
- Improv: The script was only 12 pages long, and virtually all of the dialogue is improvised, leading to some very natural conversations.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Victoria comes out as the only survivor of the group, although an intoxicated Fuß, despite being rendered unconscious before the mission, is implied to still be alive after being found by the police.
- Mood Whiplash: Victoria and the guys party in a club after the robbery is apparently a success. A few minutes later, they realize that Fuss has been arrested, and they spend the rest of the movie on the run and in danger.
- My Car Hates Me: The getaway car stalls on Victoria at the exact moment she's supposed to be driving away.
- My Greatest Failure:
- Victoria is still left reeling by the fact that she failed in her quest to become a concert pianist. She's been left with no friends and no direction in her life.
- Boxer is ashamed of the crime that landed him in prison and insists that he isn't a bad man anymore.
- Naked People Are Funny: Boxer and Blinker strip down in the club, leading to all of them being thrown out.
- Noodle Incident: Boxer refers to some sort of violent assault that landed him in prison, though he does not elaborate on the details, and he's tried to put it behind him.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The movie ends with Victoria walking off into the streets of Berlin.
- Oh, Crap!: Sonne and Victoria, when they realize the apartment they're hiding in has a baby in it.
- The Oner: The movie's most memorable feature is being shot in a single take, without any disguised cuts.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The four boys in the group are named Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuß.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Referenced when Victoria tries to make small talk with a blond bartender by asking if he's Swedish. He curtly says "no" and continues about his business.
- Real Time: The entirety of the film plays out in real time, from about 4 am to 6 am.
- Secret Stab Wound: Sonne hides the gunshot he received in the shootout with the police until it overwhelms him at the hotel.
- Sitting on the Roof: The boys' favorite place to hang out is on a building's rooftop, though they have to whisper at night to avoid getting the cops called on them.
- Tattooed Crook: When asked about his tattoos, Boxer admits that he went to prison, though he insists that he's not a bad person anymore.
- True Companions: The four men state that they've been best friends since childhood. They're close enough that three of them agree to rob a bank to help get Boxer out of a jam.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Sonne references this as a joke when he and Victoria enter an elevator.Sonne: Now you have to be very silent, you know, because nobody talks in Germany in an elevator. It's forbidden.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Fuß vomits on the floor of the cafe.