Late last week one of my friends told me about a recently released film that features Berlin: Victoria.
So I saw it Sunday evening – and while there are a number of impressive things about (like the fact that it was shot in exactly one take with one cameraman), ultimately I hate Victoria.
No, not the film, the main character, the raison d’être for the film.
Victoria is a petite, young, stupid, naïve, dumb, clueless, and generally idiotic Spanish girl who, because she is all of these things, makes a really stupid decision in the first 15 minutes of the film.
Admittedly without this decision, the film wouldn’t have a reason to exist – it would be over before it started. And I must admit that lots of literature and lots of films hinge on exactly one decision going one way, but usually it is believable because the motivation of the characters make sense; the set-up makes sense; the suspension of disbelieve is something that you, the viewer, willingly gives up.
And in what follows, there’s a pretty racy story line, complete with a bank robbery and police shoot-out.
But the thing is, Victoria, if she’d been a smart, actualized, and intelligent woman, would never have been there.
An intelligent Victoria – a petite Spanish girl who doesn’t speak German – would never have agreed to do anything with four large, muscular, thuggish German men who talked to her as she left an underground nightclub after a long night of dancing.
And the movie would have been over in 15 minutes.
Instead I spent the entire two plus hours hoping that something really bad would happen to her.
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