Victoria * * * 1/2

This isn’t showing in too many places (like... about one as far as I can tell).  Apparently it was on at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year but now Nova are giving it an airing.

Have you noticed every time a film done in "one shot" or "one take" comes out it held up as being innovative or unique?  There must be nearly a hundred of such innovative unique films out there.  I don’t know why they bother doing it to be honest. The rewards are rarely there. 
But I’ll say this about Victoria: they can justify it.  The length of the film is the exact period of the event, two and a half hours.  It  starts about 4.30 in the morning and finishes about 7.00am.  

In that time you will watch a sweet young girl commit an act which will change her life forever.

Victoria meets four boisterous young men as she leaves a Berlin nightclub.  As Victoria fools around with them you sense they’re not bad boys but they're a bit edgey - one in particular.  But there is nothing sleazy or predatory about them.  She is Spanish and speaks little German.  They can’t speak Spanish so they mostly communicate in English, which is handy for us lot.

After a long and noisy walk which includes some petty pilferage she ends up drinking and blowing dope with them on a rooftop, and to be honest at this stage I felt I’d had enough. This film didn’t seem to be going anywhere.   One of them, Sonne, she feels particularly attracted to.  He walks her to the cafe where she works as she has to open up soon.  Victoria says she’ll make him a night cap.  There is a piano in the cafe and Victoria plays in a way that leaves Sonne - and us - rather taken aback.  She says her life has been nothing but lessons and practise for years until she was at concert level - but still regarded as not good enough. Now she’s a lonely waitress. And I wonder if that was a clue as to why she agrees to do what she does next, because this film rapidly changes gear.  

Full of anxiety the other lads return to pick up Sonne as they have a job to do. One of the four is uselessly drunk and they need a driver.  Victoria agrees to go with them and drive but she soon finds herself to be well and truly on the wrong side of the law.

I won’t spoil it by letting you know how Victoria ends up but let’s just say things don’t exactly go to plan and within twenty minutes, of both screen and real time, what she has done means she will never be the same again.

As it is in real time I can understand why the director would be tempted to shoot the whole thing in one take so we are following the main character the whole time; but it does become tedious having to sit through some of the dialogue, especially in the first forty or fifty minutes as the eye of the camera is sworn not to look away or CUT to any other perspective for us. 

But once it is over the hump and the real story commences it becomes a ride that is both exhilarating and frightening. It doesn't moralise, but as you have been through the experience with her, you can’t help but feel a real concern for the main character; and in that respect Victoria is effective drama that for once actually justifies the “innovative and unique” idea of  “one shot, one take”.