Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
The film disappoints in its refusal to allow for deeper articulations of racism beyond, well, visible and verbal displays of racism.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France, Belgium · 2014
1h 35m
Director Jean-Paul Civeyrac
Starring Guslagie Malanga, Nadia Moussa, Catherine Mouchet, Pierre Andrau
Genre Drama
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Victoria, a black eight-year-old orphan, spends the night with an upper-class white family. Still haunted by the experience years later, her life changes forever when she unexpectedly reconnects with the family's son. The film explores the complicated politics race, class, and privilege in modern-day Paris.
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
The film disappoints in its refusal to allow for deeper articulations of racism beyond, well, visible and verbal displays of racism.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
As drifting and dreamy as its searching heroine, My Friend Victoria takes a graceful but unsatisfying stroll through the life and longings of a young black woman in contemporary Paris.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Victoria is definitely what you would call a passive protagonist, and although the film subtly explores questions of ethnic identity, it doesn't necessarily keep one engaged until the end.
My Friend Victoria has a specific vibrancy as delicate and understated as Lessing's social critique. It's an accumulation of small moments: telling gazes, sour notes in the dialogue, the persistent impression of a woman who's in a room but never fully present.
Accepting your true identity is accepting who you are as a human being.