Sex and the
married girl

>> Viva is a kitschy ode to
’70s erotic comedies

by MATTHEW HAYS

It’s impossible not to be impressed by the triple threat of Anna Biller, the L.A.-based filmmaker who writes, directs and stars in Viva, her feature directorial debut (and that’s not even counting her co-producer and costume designer credits). The film is a free-loving ode to the campy erotic comedies of the ’60s and ’70s, in particular the films of Radley Metzger.

It’s an odd concoction, hitting all the right notes: wooden acting styles, clumsy dialogue, improbable situations that evolve into entirely ludicrous ones, and brilliant, glow-in-the-dark, tacky set and costume design. For films about sex, these films were more about the tease than the actual act, with plenty of naughty talk made by babes wearing revealing outfits. Viva is a mindbender of a movie, a dreamscape in which Biller looks back to a pre-AIDS era of what many in the underground celebrated as a newfound liberation. Biller plays a repressed housewife who learns about various carnal pleasures, turning herself into Viva, a newly rebranded woman with a clitoris made of Kryptonite.

Or so the narrative goes, on its surface. And make no mistake, Biller gives great surface: the sets and costumes alone deserve a slew of awards, they are so perfectly period-tacky. And cinematographer C. Thomas Lewis captures everything with a camera that is simultaneously strangely distant and hyper-voyeuristic.

Many critics have been right to suggest that Viva is overly long, and that its campy dialogue and obtuse style are intriguing, but perhaps overstay their welcome. This could be in part because Biller has worked mainly as a short filmmaker and this is her first effort at extending things to feature length.

But where critics are wrong is to argue that Viva is merely a stylistic exercise, a vapid ode to a genre. The men who our heroine Viva does encounter talk up the fantastic side of sexual liberation, but there’s rarely any sign that it’s actually pleasurable or empowering for Viva herself. Once you dig past all that Formica, vinyl and lipstick, Biller is making feminist digs of her own, suggesting that something much darker lies beyond the valley of the dolls.

Viva opens this
Friday, April 11

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