Victoria

Quand la forme triomphe sur le contenu. Chapeau aux créateurs pour leurs talents créatifs et le travail de préparation qui a dû être fourni avant le tournage pour pouvoir réaliser le film entier en une seule prise. Malheureusement, le film est terriblement handicapé par le comportement des personnages, lesquels prennent les décisions les plus débiles que l’on puisse imaginer dans le seul but de faire avancer le schmilblick. Et vu que le film impose ces idiots au spectateur pendant 140 minutes, ce dernier vivra avec autant d’intensité leurs comportements insensés et la durée exagérée du film. (27/10/2021)

Pour ma part, j'avais une forte présomption que j'allais apprécier ce film. Laia Costa m'avait charmé à San Sebastian dans Un amor. Son charme combiné avec le Berlin nocturne ne pouvait décevoir. Pourtant, ce fut le cas. La moitié du film consiste en des bavardages stupides, qui plus est en anglais. La seconde moitié présente une action stupide et insensée. Trois étoiles – et c’est généreux. (09/03/2024)

140 minutes c'est beaucoup pour un concept traitant de l'authentique activité nocturne de quelques personnages dans les lieux ordinaires de Berlin. La première moitié traîne un peu dans des scènes et des dialogues trop banals. Cependant, la suite de l'intrigue surprend, surtout si vous ne savez rien du tout à son sujet. Les ennuis se profilent, nous les pressentons et nous en avons peur, car l'héroïne principale ne les mérite pas. Un « plan-séquence » très réussi, émotionnel et soigneusement orchestré, avec de bonnes performances d'acteurs. (28/08/2022)

(BE2CAN, Lucerna) A very intensive experience, likeable characters, a high degree of credibility and form that leaves you flabbergasted. For me, by far the best of this year’s Be2Can: it wasn’t too brooding, didn’t have any snobbish answer to existential questions, it even had a plot! And it got an applause, wow! (18/10/2015)

Like Birdman, Victoria fails to convince us that the one-shot approach is anything more than a way to show off (the director likes to boast in interviews that, unlike Iñárritu, he didn’t use “invisible” digital editing and managed to get the whole film down on the third attempt with the actors after ten days of rehearsals). That said, it starts promisingly. Despite the seeming spontaneity, a clear plan and consideration for the viewer can be perceived behind the construction of the plot. All of the main characters are introduced to us during the lively prologue and we can easily remember them thanks to their nicknames. A clever safeguard against occasional slips of the tongue and hesitations is the fact that most of the characters don’t speak their native languages for a large part of the film, so they sometimes have to search for the right expression for a moment. On the roof, potential conflict is indicated by drawing attention to Boxer’s criminal past. In the café, the relationship between Victoria and Sonne is deepened through authentically intimate dialogue, legitimising the girl’s subsequent decision to join in the action to come. When the narrative begins to conform to familiar genre formulas, it loses steam and nearly all of its potential to somehow surprise us. One cliché follows another (the need to find a substitute accomplice, the engine failing to start, the gunshot wound not revealed until long after the impact), the absolute majority of scenes last longer than is necessary, the initially rather likable characters behave increasingly like idiots (which, from a certain moment should clearly be partially explained by the fact that they are under the influence of drugs), and the predictable ending is delayed by a number of unnecessary feints that in no way deepen the characters’ psychology or expand the film’s slight intellectual foundations. Despite the impressive technical execution (the cinematographer rightly gets priority over the director in the closing credits) and the skilful guidance of our attention by alternating between greater and lesser depth of focus, the film is not engaging enough to work as an example of intense “experiential” cinema, nor is it suitably rich in motifs or appropriately specific in the setting or characters (the protagonists barely have enough character traits for a two-and-a-half-hour film) to be taken as a statement about today’s multicultural Berlin or Generation Y. Victoria has bigger ambitions and a bigger budget, but in the end, it’s an admirable failure. (09/10/2015)