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Interviews with famous people in grand hotels can often feel overwhelming. There’s the hushed, busy, overworked PR telling you where to sit. There’s the long, nervous wait before the interview actually starts. And there’s the awkwardness of actually encountering this notable personality for the first time while (sometimes) having to stick to a list of pre-approved questions. Björn Swoboda and Eike Frederik Schulz’ The Interview – commissioned to create a branded film for Retterspitz’s first ever perfume Juniper – captures this feeling of anticipation well; utilising long zooms to convey the alienation of journalist Isabelle (played by Aggy K. Adams), wandering through the halls of Milan’s Westin Palace to interview a perfumer. Using the olfactory allure of the scent as a starting point, they allow its seduction to take over, creating a porous, satisfying tumble down the rabbit hole of erotic attraction. Directors Swoboda and Schulz join...

Earning about as much praise as criticism (including tying for the Silver Berlin Bear in 2015) is actor/director Sebastian Schipper’s fourth feature, Victoria, the impressively formulated, single take romance/bank heist thriller. Completed after three attempts and largely improvised (the initial script was only twelve pages), it’s a testament to the ambitious possibilities of cinema, and potentially an argument for the necessity for multiple takes in the first place. Although its limited Us theatrical release in October, 2015 courtesy of distributor Adopt Films didn’t garner the same excited response it received on the international circuit (it was actually bypassed by the Toronto International Film Festival), this will be a title now referenced as the gold standard for narratives transpiring within a single take.

Opening in the throes of a dance floor of a packed techno club, Victoria (Costa), makes her way to the exit. Dawn is approaching, and she’s scheduled to work,...

Sleepless Night: Schipper’s Audacious, Single Take Heist Thriller

Actor turned director Sebastian Schipper makes major headway with his fourth effort behind the camera, Victoria. Premiering at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival where it snagged an award for cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grovlen (who also lensed Anders Morgenthaler’s The 11th Hour, which starred Schipper, as well as the 2015 Un Certain Regard winner, Rams), this two hour plus blend of romantic drama and heist thriller was filmed in one, single take, shot in the wee morning hours on the streets of Berlin. Technically accomplished and satisfying as a narrative, the film provides lead actress Laia Costa, playing the titular protagonist, with a spectacular role that should see her international career boom a bit like Franka Potente’s following Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998).

Opening in the throes of a dance floor of a packed techno club, Victoria (Costa), makes her way to the exit.

Victoria

Sebastian Schipper

Sebastian Schipper, Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Eike Frederik Schulz

Germany, 2015

Victoria is a movie with a gimmick. This is not to say that Victoria isn’t a worthwhile film or that it’s a film that can’t stand on its own, but the gimmick it carries is undeniable or rather, the gimmick carries the film. The gimmick of this German crime thriller is that it weighs in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, and the entire movie takes place over one long take. This is to say that there are no cuts, no multiple shots, no scene breaks. The entire plot of the film unfolds, as it happens, in real time, and the camera never cuts or looks away.

This is, in and of itself, an achievement worthy of praise. Victoria isn’t a bottle movie. It’s not one location with four characters. This film takes place on a city-wide scale,...