Starring Anna Biller, Bridget Brno. Written and directed by Anna
Biller. (STC) 120 min. Screens Feb 29 and Mar 1, 9pm and Mar 2 & 4,
time TBA at the Royal, 608 College.
The title of Viva of course means “to live,” and its eponymously named (or rather pseudonymed) heroine does enough living for several movies — if not the entire sexploitation subgenre. Sensing a change in the backyard-poolside air, stifled So Cal hausfrau Barbi (writer-director Anna Biller) ditches the kitchen and goes sex-kitten, getting drugged, duped and groped by various high-fashion photographers, hippies and husbands (including her own) along the path to superstardom.
With its painstakingly tacky early-’70s aesthetic and fleshy, Radley Metzgerian set pieces, Viva wears its pastiche on its (flared) sleeve, but there’s something more here than a mere exercise in art direction. Biller, a noted short filmmaker with art-scene cred, has crafted a film about the sexual revolution of the ’70s informed by several decades’ worth of hindsight. She approximates the leering gaze of the period’s porn-meisters while retaining a contemporary female sensibility — Viva the film is as sly and knowing as Viva the character is endearingly oblivious.
Biller’s performance (much of it given sans clothes) straddles a line between camp and sincerity, a balancing act unfortunately lost on some of her co-stars, who trip over their too-stilted line readings. Or maybe it’s that two hours is just too long even for clever satire — this send-up of gaudy overindulgence is, finally, too gaudily overindulgent for its own good.