Viva

I saw this movie this morning and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day. It was like watching a film made by Radley Metzger, Russ Meyer, and George Kuchar all rolled into one. It's a hilarious homage to the sixties/early seventies sexploitation pictures and Playboy philosophy, and despite the copious nudity and many references to sex, it's strangely one of the most innocent films I've seen in a long time. The performances, costumes and script as well as Ms. Biller's use of sets and color are mind-boggling and transform the movie into a camp masterpiece. Why did this go direct to video and not play the theater circuit? It would be perfect for midnight movie showings. I'm curious how she found funding for this film in this day and age and am eagerly looking forward to her next one. This movie is amazing!

With the film starting off with the narrator stating it's the year 1972 and we are introduced to our protagonist, writer/director/star Anna Biller, reading the book in the bathtub "Decorating with Crochet," we have the perfect campy 70s set up for this modern feminist take on the 70s sexual revolution. I'm obsessed with writer/director Anna Biller's film THE LOVE WITCH, which had a 1960s Technicolor aesthetic that blew me away, as well as cleverly turning sexist gender norms of the time on their head, so I finally got around to seeing her first film, VIVA. In this film, Biller herself plays an ordinary 1970s housewife who has something of an awakening during that era's sexual revolution. However, she pretty much experiences the worst aspects of the revolution (sexist swinging, orgies, nudist camps, prostitution, drugging, assault, etc.). The hippie nudist colony episode was probably my favorite, with its hilarious stupid hippie love song (it was very "Saturday Market" community stage). Thematically, Biller beat Gretta Gerwig's BARBIE by about 15 years when it comes to humorously challenging the patriarchy in a campy manner (though I suppose Aristohanies did it first with Lysistratain in ancient Greece). While VIVA has a light tone, it's a pretty dark story. One thing Biller does that Gerwig did not is mock the "male gaze," which she does to a tee. Biller said she based several of the scenes on Playboy cartoons, which is a brilliant way to capture the era's media objectification of women. Biller compared her character to Voltaire's Candidate, an innocent with an inappropriately positive outlook toward a very bad world. VIVA is purposefully presented, acted, and shot in an overly mannered fashion that will either click for audiences or not. It's going to either annoy or delight viewers, but I found the purposefully campy acting and dialogue hilarious, along with the cheesy wigs, sets, and outfits (which were actually pretty spot on). The soundtrack borrows heavily from Italian film soundtracks of the 60s and 70s and works fantastically well. I've been listening to a Spotify playlist for this movie for a while now. VIVA reminded me of John Waters' films. Waters's low-budget campy representations of the 1950s and 60s are very similar to Biller's low-budget campy representation of the early 70s. Waters and Biller's campy acting and dialogue are also quite similar. For a low-budget film, the photography is quite good. The colors pop in a bright, lively way, like it's an episode of THE MONKEES. Impressively, not only did Biller write, direct, and star in the film, but she's pretty much a one-woman show, also doing the music, production design, editing, costumes, animation, and producing the film. My only complaint is the lack of a strong narrative throughline, with Biller's character simply moving from one awful event to the next, and at two hours, it would have been a stronger film if it had been tightened up. Still, VIVA is a smart and hilarious critique of the patriarchy, even when the woke 70s men think they're being progressive.

The demented genius behind A VISIT FROM THE INCUBUS strikes again. Seriously, though, what is VIVA? Caught this about seven months ago and am still trying to take it all in. I loved this film because I never knew what was going to happen next, despite it following the model of '60's/'70's sexploitation films pretty closely. The first few minutes are simply exhilarating. A young housewife leafs through a skin mag in her bathtub, gets herself ready for the outside world, and blasts off in some bad-ass muscle car, just as the wonderful piece of vintage loungecore music on the soundtrack reaches a crescendo. (At least that's how I remember it.) Sublime; I'm at a loss to think of a better opening scene. (TOUCH OF EVIL, studio cut, perhaps? It's too close to call.) Then we settle in for the long haul. The housewife is hanging out with her friends, a married couple. Things get inappropriate. How far will it go? Exactly what kind of a movie is this? That's really the question that VIVA dares the viewer to answer. I'm still not sure. Satire or pornography? Happily, the answer is yes.

The film is two hours. That would be hard to justify if it were just a slavish imitation of vintage softcore porn. Or just a spoof of same. Instead, it's almost a suspense film. How long has it been since an American film had me wondering who among the cast was going to disrobe? Who was going to disrobe NEXT? Who will have sex next? Will it even be consensual?! All those people constantly cruising each other. Predatory. With the color-soaked visual panache of Radley Metzger in Eastmancolor, but with a storyline from a Joe Sarno film where everyone thinks and talks about sex all the time, has weird, anonymous, masked sex all the time, and never enjoys it. Almost exactly like the adult world seemed to me in 1972. Plus deadly serious feminist self-reflexivity for the unwashed masses and nude dancers with their wieners bobbing hilariously for intellectuals like myself, courtesy of a nudist camp scene that is exactly like Blake Edwards WOULD have done it in A SHOT IN THE DARK, if Hollywood censorship had already relaxed, and he was on angel dust. And all the while, the deliciously arch Jared Sanford does his best to act dozens of naked people off the screen. Two hours was barely enough. Bring on the 70mm IMAX release, the three-disc DVD special edition with the signed and numbered lithographs, and the "Vote for Viva" t-shirts in every trendy mall novelty store.

An affectionate send-up of 60's and 70's sexploitation schlock, Viva is the brainchild of star, writer, director, producer, editor Anna Biller. Word has it she also catered the film, drove the actors to set and held the boom while simultaneously acting in front of the camera. I'm only half kidding. But it illustrates a problem with the film which is that with one person assuming so many of the key creative roles there's the risk of a loss of objectivity in the creative process and fewer people to hold the tendency towards self-indulgence in check.

Watching Viva, I couldn't help but feel it would have made a great short. There's about thirty minutes of interesting material here stretched out over a two hour running time. Once you get what the film is going for in its beginning act with the intentionally stilted performances, the mod set design, the garish color palette, Viva holds few surprises the rest of the way. That isn't to say the film is without its pleasures. Biller has the look of those films down pat - the aforementioned set design, the cinematography, the hair and makeup are completely evocative of the type of film-making Russ Meyer, Italian director Pasquale Campanile et al. made their names in back in the day. The performances, though, are uneven. Biller is fine as the titular character but some actors (notably the actor playing the hair dresser) do everything but look straight into the camera and wink directly at the audience. There's an art to acting in this kind of satire (see the Planet Terror portion of Grindhouse.

All in all, an interesting addition to what seems to be an emerging trend of films that attempt to revive long dead genres apparently beginning with 2003's Down With Love and then gaining mainstream popularity with Robert Rodriguez's Sin City in 2005.

Anna Biller's 'Viva' is two silly hours of campy,good fun. It attempts to satire late 1960's,early 1970's soft core pre-porn films (when they had wall to wall female nudity,but no actual graphic/explicit sexual intercourse depicted on screen). The acting seems to be lifted from early John Waters' films (Pink Flamingo's & even before). The set design,with it's use of pastel colours (as well as primary colours,as well)are a treat for the eye, as they seem to be lifted from period photo shoots of classic late 60's Playboy,as well as record sleeve covers from the late 1950's (especially the Martin Denny covers,with it's beautiful women & it's over saturated use of colour). Anna Biller,in addition to acting as the film's central female lead,Barbi,also wore several hats in the production of this campy period piece (she wrote,directed & edited the film,in addition to set design & even supervising a brief animation sequence,where Barbi is experiencing her first real orgasm, while on some kind of psychedelic drug).The plot concerns a young,suburban housewife who's loutish husband ignores,and eventually abandons her,only to leave her to experimenting with her new found sexual self,including swingers,hippies,etc. I guess if I have any real beef with this film, is the fact that it has several song & dance numbers that do little more than pad the film out to it's two hour (somewhat over long) running time. The song & dance numbers for me,could have been left on the cutting room floor which would have not hurt the film's integrity,one bit). Aside from that,don't go to this film expecting a dead serious Dogme like existential rant on how empty & shallow the human existence is. Just go & have some good clean (dirty)fun. No MPAA rating here,but has scads of both female & male full frontal nudity,sexual situations (both hetrosexual,as well as gay),and other adult material that would have landed this film it's dreaded 'X' rating back in the day,but would pull down little more than a R, these days.