The beginning was hard to adapt to. But as your eyes get adjusted to the style of camerawork, you then get involved with some nice character development.
Then we suddenly get a tense thriller for the entire second half that definitely ups the ante from an almost Richard Linklater-esque first half romantic drama.
The big sell is the single take. For a duration of 138 minutes, that is certainly an impressive achievement to construct everything so it flows nicely into the next scene and for everyone involved to not slip up on their lines, emotions and reactions. It is quite a challenge to keep this film entertaining without any passage of time moments. In the end, they manage to pull it off nicely.
But what makes this film a great watch is that the characters and story manages to overshadow the making of this and becomes the centrepiece throughout.
The performances are very convincing throughout and get better as the film turns up a notch in the second half. Props to the leading performance by Laia Costa. She is terrific from start to finish. The first half shows us a character with ambition and looking for her place in the world. Then we see a totally different side to her character that makes her even more watchable.
The rest of the main cast lead by Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yigit and Max Mauff were all great supporting roles.
From a technical side, the cinematography is pretty good, especially in the tense final act. As for the single take, unlike films like Birdman and Rope that make clever editing to make it seem like one-take, this is the real deal. It is hard to imagine how they managed to construct a two hour film that is done in one-take and having to time everything to work within the setting.
The only part that bugged me was one scene towards the end where our lead character made a decision that made no sense in terms what type of person she has been in the film. It just did not feel right.
But apart from that, I really enjoyed this. You cannot ignore the technical achievement that it has created. It absorbs you into the setting and characters. However, having great performances with a gripping story made this more than just a gimmick. I liked the use of the different languages used in this. While our main character can speak Spanish and English, the other characters that she comes across speak German. There is a clever use of the other characters talking in German so that she does not understand what they are talking about, and it informs us what the supporting characters are really like which flows well into the thrilling second half.
This could easily be a great film even without the ambitious technical achievement.
Rating: 8/10
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