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Viva (2007)

Director: Anna Biller

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From Time Out New York

Anna Biller’s pseudofeminist send-up of the sexploitation movies of the late ’60s and early ’70s—particularly those by Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger—remains as limp as the flaccid dongs at her film’s nudist sing-along. The obsessively detailed garish color palette, the peekaboo nighties and the electric-green leisure suits can’t make up for her feature debut’s main flaw: Deliberate camp (to paraphrase Susan Sontag) is never as successful as pure, or naive, camp. A microphone intruding outrageously into a shot stops being funny after the fifth time.
While Biller, who also wrote, may have a knack for decor and costuming (the strongest suit in her shorts as well), this slavish attention to the look of her film only enervates when all of the proceedings (in sum, an L.A. housewife becomes a call girl and goes to an orgy) are in scare quotes. In her director’s statement, Biller says that Viva is “part of a new wave of sexually challenging and disturbing films.” Maybe—if you’ve never seen the missionary position or two women kiss chastely. For all her bravado, Biller’s work will never be as challenging or sexy as Metzger’s bi romp from 1973, Score, in which dicks and chicks see plenty of action.

Author: Melissa Anderson

Time Out New York Issue 657: May 1 - 7, 2008

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User reviews of this film

  • Myra Breckenridge said...
    Posted on May 05 2008 16:59 This film is pure cinematic joy, from its overfull mise-en-scene to its throwback musical numbers - it makes us reconsider the terms and very existence of a genre that has customarily been treated as beneath contempt. I don't quite get the disdain and sourness of this reviewer. The film doesn't necessarily aim to be about sex per se, but the consumerist promise of the sexual revolution writ large, on the daily habits and experiences of women in the early 1970s. It is a devoted, while not uncritical, homage to a genre - sexploitation - which, as is clear from many reviews, still remains an irresolvably "bad object" - neither explicit enough to be rendered as "transgressive" as hard core porn - nor "sophisticated" enough to be treated as "art" - in the arthouse erotica mode. That the film provokes such critical handwringing is itself a testament to its vivacity and aesthetic, cultural and intellectual interest. This film provides both immeasurable visual pleasures, artisanally crafted by its female director, as well as a critical engagement of what we think of when we imagine the historical past through its commodities and artifacts. TONY readers I dare you to defy this crappy review and go see it!
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Viva

Cast & crew

Director: Anna Biller

Cast: Bridget Brno, Jared Sanford, Chad England

Rated: NR

Duration: 120 mins

US Release: May 2 2008


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