Viva Riva!

I caught a small screening of this film and couldn't take my eyes from the screen until the final credits rolled. A 'neighborhood kid' returning to his hometown brings some baggage back with him. Filmed on location in Kinshasa, this film makes you say 'Did they really just do that?' over and over. Riva may not be the best guy, but his attitude about life makes me respect him. Overall, I would call it a gangster flick set in the Congo with greed, corrupt government officials, and a dash of romance. You can also expect the usual twisting plot with plenty of action, sex, and alcohol. Nothing is left to the imagination. If it happens in the story, you get to see it.. all of it.

I got a chance to screen Viva Riva! recently and have to say that I had an incredible time watching this film. There are a lot of similarities to blaxploitation films of the 1970s which makes the film all the more interesting to watch. The film is action packed and suspenseful and really makes for a thrilling ride. Riva, played wonderfully by Patsha Bay, is full of grit and macho- ness that make him the most interesting character to watch. His chemistry with Nora (Manie Malone) is steamy and very sexually charged which is explored in a couple very seductive scenes. This film is somewhat of a guy's action movie with the overt sexuality of the characters and heavy use of fighting and gore. Overall, I would recommend this film to anybody looking for a truly gritty and bad ass film with a little more soul. The characters are strong and charismatic and ready to fight anyone who crosses their path!

Viva Riva works best as a film that will fill your eyes and I mean that in the best sense. The film looks really good from the costumes of the nattily dressed gangsters that Riva is trying to rip off to the complete flashiness of the art deco of the nightclubs that these guys rule over--the film is dripping with style. I should add that the movie is also dripping with violence also as the movie has quite a bit of violence even towards women in it throughout. Its not a film that spares someone from a beating just because she's a she.

The movie's narrative on the other hand is pretty classic. Small time hustler and thief returns to hometown and promptly falls for gangster's girl. Gangster notices and gets upset. Meanwhile the thief is being tracked down and targeted for revenge by the guys he stole from...and those guys are not playing around, they're way more dangerous then the flashy gangster. Film works really well to a point. That point would be the last twenty or so minutes (maybe even ten minutes) where the plot threads that have been forming the whole time finally come together but they don't exactly merge the way you'd like them to. I don't know if it works exactly but i enjoyed it more or less even if its not a plot you haven't already seen in many a film before.

Film is worth checking out tho if you're a fan of hard boiled crime stories or classic gangster cinema (by which i mean movies where the dames talk tougher then the anti heroes) Film does end kind of abruptly--there;s a big shootout (of course) but what happens at the end should've been made either more explicit or more final. Its interesting that i saw this not long before i saw "submarine" because while the two films have absolutely nothing in common--they both sort of suffer in comparison to other films in their genre but are both so so pretty to watch on their own that they almost make up for it in set design alone.

Someone did their homework in this brilliantly acted existential film; a sexually charged safari into the Kinshasa black market; a world of bandit capitalists looking for the contraband long deal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, creating a new sub genre- African film noir...gritty, real, dark and poignant, where anyone who knows movies beyond the entertainment spectrum is going to find this bit of creative genius to be a damned fine piece of work which evidences an eye for nuance about the human condition as experienced in any 3rd World country where poverty is endemic and the struggle for survival is more than a party game.

Deliberate or not, our actions seem to have a way of coming back on us. Some believe that ancestors, universe or gods are in control, holding us accountable and making us reap what we sow. Others consider everything that happens to be random events, some more significant than others. In the world of Viva Riva! money, the main reason for living and the principal cause of death, is the only thing that matters.

In Djo Tunda Wa Munga's Kinshasa every man, woman and child is for themselves. It's a place where solidarity and gain are, if not synonymous so inseparable, and likely to shift at any time. A place where everyone is doing what they can to carve out a unique space within which to operate and make enough money to survive, maybe even thrive.

One of the hardest working hustlers is Riva (Patsha Bay), who has returned to his hometown Kinshasa with a truckload of petrol that he's planning to sell. During a night out he meets Nora (Manie Malone) and falls in love with her (or decides he wants to own her, a distinction that's hard to make in a world where the line between purchasing and physical desire is severely blurred). Before becoming obscenely rich and winning Nora's heart (which is obviously not for free), Riva first has to deal with César (Hoji Fortuna), the crook from whom he stole the petrol, and Azor (Diplome Amekindra), Nora's gangster boyfriend, who isn't prepared to let go of her, more out of a sense of ownership than love .

One could maybe be forgiven for being tempted to regard both Nora and Riva as just entertaining comic books heroes inhabiting a surreal world, but not for ignoring that Munga is reminding us that whatever we do, and whomever we have become, we are still someone's daughter or son, thus offering his audience the opportunity to engage with this sexy existential action in all its complexity. Similarly, writing off Nora as a passive black Barbie and the enemy of emancipated women would be a rather uninspired interpretation of a film that, like the brilliant TV-series The Wire and Deadwood, is a poignant and vibrant comment on capitalism gone haywire. Viva Riva! could actually not have been released at a better time, when countries are crumbling and thousands of New Yorkers and others are marching against a rampant capitalist system that is leaving millions of wounded along its way.

Amidst news about a country in flames, where people in general and women in particular are falling victim to unparalleled cruelties, it's not always easy to remember that people still dance, laugh, make love and cheat on each other in Kinshasa. And out of misguided concern for those who suffer, we might easily be fooled into denying the existence of every-day concerns in the DRC and other troubled corners of the world. What we should remember however, is that the day we forget that the Congolese are individuals that cannot be defined just by the circumstances they live under, that's the day when we'll forget about our shared humanity, and when we'll stop caring about a people too often portrayed as one-dimensional victims or villains without a past and no real hope of a future.Too proud a Congolese, Djo Munga won't allow us to forget or reduce his people, and too accomplished a filmmaker, he's incapable of not reminding us in the most exciting and entertaining way.

(This and other movie reviews are available on the blog IN THE WORDS OF KATARINA)