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« Posterized: Joe Wright's "Pan" and Peter Pan Movies | Main | Hail this Teaser for "Hail, Caesar!" »
Saturday
Oct102015

Interview: Laia Costa Talks "Victoria" and Her Favorite Actresses

Jose speaks with the star of the must-see one-take German drama Victoria (now in theaters!)

 Few performances this year have been as electrifying as Laia Costa in Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria. Playing the title character she combines innocence with determination in thrilling ways. When we first meet Victoria she is dancing the night away at a club unaware that before the night is over she will be part of a high stakes heist with three men she just met. Schipper’s film is notorious because it was shot in a single, uninterrupted take, no digital trickery in this one, although people have been comparing it to 2014’s Best Picture Birdman all over,  “comparisons are inevitable” but “Victoria is punkier”, says Costa when we speak on the phone. “Someone said that everything has already been invented, we can’t invent anything new” she adds laughing.

Talking to the actress you get a sense of the camaraderie she developed with the cast and crew of the movie. She refers to her director and co-star by their last names, and you can tell she has endless anecdotes about the challenging shoot. Costa will be familiar to fans of the television series The Red Band Society, but Victoria is her biggest screen role to date and has already won her the German Film Award for Best Actress (the first time a Spanish actor has won this accolade). Audiences in Spain can currently see her in Carlos, Rey Emperador where she plays Mary of Austria, a process she calls “more artificial, they’re interested in facts about Spanish history not seeking truth in the characters”, but very necessary because as an actress she seeks to learn by working in as many genres as possible.


JOSE: How many Red Bulls and espressos did you need to shoot Victoria?

LAIA COSTA: Not a single one. It was all just concentration (laughs).

JOSE: You’ve mentioned that making the film was like being on drugs…

LAIA COSTA: Yes, because it was a shooting style I’d never done before, which allowed me to live Victoria’s life for two and a half hours, and go on a “trip”. [More...]

I’ve never done drugs, but I understand the concept of “tripping” because that’s what this movie felt like. 

I spoke to Sebastian Schipper a few weeks ago and mentioned to him how I thought of Victoria as a modern fairy tale, in how we see the young girl go with the wolf instead of going to grandma’s house.

Regarding the princess and the wolves, the difference is that this princess has been expelled from her palace in a way. Back in Madrid she was a princess, but there was a moment where circumstance forced her to pack her bags and move to Berlin. In a way Victoria is looking for the wolf, she’s asking him to show up. Back in her palace she couldn’t be out partying at 4AM. This is very sad because there are many young people who are promised paradise if they abide to the rules, only to realize there is no such thing. It’s what’s happening in Spain, we have followed the rules and there are no jobs, so the moment comes when you decide to live your life as you wish, unafraid of the future, parents or society. She’s a princess who needs this detour through the woods to find herself.

 What about the screenplay caught your attention originally?

For starters there was no screenplay, I never even saw those 12 pages people are talking about (laughs), Schipper just explained the story to me and that was it, I knew it would be shot in a single take, that there was a heist and that was it. I discovered most of the plot while we were rehearsing.

Sebastian told me about a test you and Frederick Lau did in his hotel room. What was that about?

Schipper did the casting in Barcelona with casting director Luci Lenox, who lives in Spain, their session was in a hotel and mostly has us improvise. I had great chemistry with Lau, you know, sometimes you meet an actor with whom you have to work hard on chemistry, but there are actors with whom you click from the get go. This made the relationship between Sonne and Victoria really rich and fun to work on.


People in the States know you for your work in The Red Band Society which had you play the same character over months of shooting, while Victoria was shot in a single night. How was your acting approach different with these two?

I approach all my work the same way, I work based on instinct, and in order to do that all I need to know is what the director want to say with the story. You work that before shooting, I work the same way in TV and film, the difference is that in Victoria I had a whole month to research my character, which is a lot of time. Sometimes they cast you in a project a month before shooting and you have to stay home with your screenplay for three weeks trying to learn everything, the process in Victoria was open all throughout. We even changed things in between the one-takes, it was a very “alive” process because nothing was fixed. In fact we were forbidden to fix anything. This process is great because many times people are restricted by the screenplay and only in the editing room do they realize there are things that don’t work, but they’re out of money to go back and shoot retakes.

Most heist films are usually about men, but Victoria is about your character, which I thought was pretty kick ass!

That was part of the process. The original screenplay wasn’t called Victoria, they named it that after we had shot the three one-takes and they locked themselves in the sound editing room. Originally it was called 1258, later Three Guys, One Driver, then She Drives...Victoria became the center of the story until we shot it, I don’t think she was the lead character originally. It was a slow process that came to happen once Schipper and the co-writers made changes that made her the center. I think it’s great, because Victoria is a surrogate for the audience, and she allows them to be part of the story. She’s also not a stereotypical character, she’s not simply a good girl gone bad, that would be boring, she is an idealist who is trying to break the rules.

I feel that your look and attitude in the film are reminiscent of punk versions of Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood. What actresses do you admire or would like to emulate?

I love so many actresses, but there are four films with four performances that knocked me out, and they do so every single time I go back and watch the film again. The first one is A Woman Under the Influence, I love Gena Rowlands in it, I also love Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher, I love Holly Hunter in The Piano, and Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves...oh my god! She’s simply incredible in that film. The more I think about this, I think these are actually my favorite films too, if I ever gave a performance like any of those I’d be happy. But I also love Suzanne Clement in Mommy, there are many performances I love and keep as references to inspire my work.

I hope you end in a Von Trier or Haneke movie then!

I’ll cross my fingers, too (laughs)


Victoria opened in theaters yesterday. Previous discussions of Victoria here.

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Reader Comments (5)

She is my spirit actress. Her four favorite performances include two of my top 5 actress of all time and my favorite performance of all time is hers, too.

I haven't seen Victoria, but now I am gonna see.

I love when actors are cinephiles, too.

October 10, 2015 | Unregistered Commentercal roth

Cal -- yeah, she has great taste. VICTORIA is such an experience. exhausting but i'm glad i saw it. i haven't stopped thinking about it since TIFF

October 10, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterNATHANIEL R

Great job, José. Did you get any sense that she was hitting on me personally when she listed those performances as her personal benchmarks?

October 11, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterNick Davis

Nick -- Jose told me that she confirmed as much but we didn't want to embarrass you by putting it right here in bold prin... oops.

October 11, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterNATHANIEL R

What a great interview! Thanks for sharing.

October 12, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterIvonne
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