Victoria

Photo credit: www.europeanfilmcollege.com

Victoria is a film I want to write about. So expect lots of spoilers and long musings.

The film tells the story of one night/morning combo in Berlin and we follow Victoria, a Spanish girl from Madrid living in Berling and working at a café. We see her first at a night club dancing to club music. She then goes to the bar and orders a schnapps, she also asks the barman if he likes one as well (he doesn't). She drinks her schnapps and visits the loo and then goes out and I finally figured out that she is there on her own.

God I felt old. In one corner of my mind I tried to remember the last time I was that reckless but I couldn't. Maybe it was growing in a society where one has a lot of friends to hang out with when one is young but it never occurred to me at no point in my youth to visit a night club and dance on my own. I was curious about this Victoria. Although there are clues to her being lonely, she is not seeking out sex. She doesn't have any make up, her hair is not blow dried, she has on a jean and a t-shirt and she wears a regular sweater and a hooded light coat going out. This is not a girl who seeks out a bed mate. While going out someone in line asks whether it is good inside and she says she doesn't speak German. He asks in English and she says it is good inside and then goes out, takes her bike and starts to head somewhere (probably home). The guy who asked her the question and his three friends were not allowed in and say hello while she is riding her bike. She is not scared or intimidated as I would have been with four drunk men (one, clearly Turkish since he wears a hideous flashy leather jacket and a red headband and another with a shaved head) making gentle passes at her but it is clearly Sonne who likes her best. The other guys in the gang are Boxer, Blinker and Fuss. They try to tell her some lies about owning a car and owning a shop but not really trying to con her, they are just bored, drunk and looking for fun. She joins them in their fun and even helps steal beers from a Turkish shop (whose owner is blissfully asleep) She doesn't drink much and they offer to show her the streets and then their secret rooftop and she says yes. Four of them go to the rooftop and drink the beers and share a joint. She then has to go to the café she works where she will sleep for a few hours before opening the café. It doesn't make sense to go home now. Sonne escorts her to the café and after small flirtation she asks him in for a cocoa and he says yes. He tries to show off as a piano player on the piano at the café. But Victoria turns out to be a real piano player and she plays a beautiful peace (Mephisto Waltz?) mesmerising us and Sonne. She then tells her story that she has worked her ass off from childhood and told at the end of her teens that she needs to quit since she is not good enough. All her life she did nothing but play piano (that is why she doesn't have any friends, and that is why she moves to another city) and cries a bit. Sonne is tender and compassionate and they kiss but a phone call from Boxer interrupts their little romance and Sonne explains that Boxer owes something to the people who protected him in jail so all four will be doing something unspecified for that man. And he'd like to see her again and she likes to see him again too.

Just as she brushed her teeth the four of them come back with Fuss being really drunk and vomitting and passing out. They need to be four people to go see this man and Boxer asks Sonne to ask Victoria and surprisingly she says yes. She goes with them they get into some bad stuff at which point I really wanted them to make the right decisions since basically all five are not bad people. But they don't make the right decisions, they make all the wrong decisions and in the end Sonne, Boxer and Blinker die (Fuss probably goes to jail for some time) and Victoria is left with something like 45000 Euros and a night to remember.

This film tells the story very nicely and the actors all are good (of course it helps that we don't remember seeing them anywhere else) and I was really affected by the whole thing.

Recommended (to remember your youth if you are old at least)