Victoria

This German thriller was shot entirely in one take, and the stunt is so impressive that it often overshadows the drama. A young Spanish woman living in Berlin takes up with four reckless young men she meets at a dance club; once they establish a rapport, the men coerce her to take part in a crime. Director Sebastian Schipper spends the first half of the film nervously following the characters with a handheld camera yet divulging relatively little about them. When the men reveal themselves to be criminals, the twist feels anticlimactic, given how long he’s held the audience in suspense. But beneath the pulpy plotting and breathtaking camerawork lies a subtle character study; as the heroine gradually comes into focus, she seems less a patsy in the men’s scheme than a woman with her own reasons for courting danger. In English and subtitled German.