FilmSnobReviews

Title: Victoria
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Starring: Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski
Runtime: 2 hr 18 mins

What It Is: When a young Spanish woman named Victoria (Costa) goes out for a night on the town she gets more than she bargains for when she runs into a group of young men. This group is lead by Sonne (Lau) and they are in hot water with the wrong people. This is not information that Victoria is privy to. This trouble the boys are in may come back to haunt them at a time that does not suit Victoria well at all.

What We Think: This deserves praise for sticking with its one-shot gimmick. This simultaneously hurts the production when it comes to pacing. There are pockets of this film that are absolutely snooze-worthy. In fact, try this, have someone watch this film and don’t tell them it is all one constant shot see if they notice. I guarantee no one will notice. What they will notice, if they don’t fall asleep, is how monotonous this really is. It has some great cinematography. It looks like a million bucks but definitely didn’t cost that much. It’s gimmick costs it something in the realm of tightening it up. This is such a loose film, this, however, is detrimental, greatly so.

Our Grade: C+, Outside of the way the film was shot I do not find there much to enjoy. This film is drenched in “indie” pretention from the word go. I hate that, I hate when a film uses this sort of thing solely for publicity. You’ll say, “But William, didn’t you give Birdman a glowing review”. First of all yes, secondly though that is a superior film with a better script and actual editing. If you want something to put you to sleep I would recommend this, outside of that…it’s…well…all rather meh. Let the pretentiousness begin. Tell how wrong I am.