Customer Reviews

Viva (Unrated Edition)

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When i first got this i thought it was some long lost 70s softcore exploitation film but the picture looked a bit crisp and it became somewhat clear that this was a recent made ode to Russ Meyer and 70s era swinger films. Despite being made in 2007 Viva is a beautifully filmed and entertaining piece of cinema. The sets costumes and music are all great and the feel and moods are spot on for the early 70s. It starts alittle slow but gets better as the movie progresses. There are many scenes that are almost perfect recreations of classic films like Beyond the valley of the dolls and Vampyros Lesbos- shot so well that its difficult to place it anywhere beyond 1972. The film-maker has a real talent for filling the screen with visual treats and colors that are stunning. Despite the campy nature of the story which ofcourse is done on purpose, the camerawork rivals any noteworthy film especially for a lowbudget B-movie. Oh yeah i must add thats there's tons of both male and female frontal nudity in this unrated version and the orgy scene is a mix of pyschedelic imagery and comedy that is a must see. Not everyone ofcourse will get the "in jokes" as this film is aimed at people like myself who live for retro trash cinema exploitation and cult films. I can see this on an x-rated version of mystery science theatre and will be a definite showing at any 70s party or swinger convention. Turn off the volume and make up your own dialogue at your next party for a good laugh. I think Russ Meyer would have gave his blessing to this one and thats the best praise a film like this could hope for!

Viva is one of the most original films I've seen in years. Its excessive portrayal of the 70s sexual revolution, accompanied by its campy production design, transported me back to my wild misspent youth. The deliciously saturated colors were exquisitely captured by the utterly phenomenal cinematography of C. Thomas Lewis. The incredible lighting and lensing were spot-on for the genre, and added the convincing edge needed for this homage to sexploitation. One eye-popping scene after another culminated in an orgy of visual delight certainly befitting the diva Viva. If for no other reason buy this dvd to delight in the kind of beautifully lit color that has been absent from recent movie making for far too long.

It is almost impossible to believe that this flick was made in 2007 and not thirty years earlier in the height of the swinging sexploitation era. The illusion is simply perfect, not only in set and costume design but also in characterization and acting styles. I first saw it thinking it actually was an older film, and was surprised to discover that it was entirely modern.

"Viva" is nothing what you would expect. Anna Biller, who is the writer, director, costume designer, lead actress and pretty much everything else, is firmly in the sex-positive feminist camp and has set out to make a movie that lures you in with the promise of easy sleaze but then delivers something else. Oh, to be sure there are nudist camps and swinger parties, orgies and naughty poolside antics, but none of it is there to sexually excite the viewer, with no tight focusing on body parts. The men are fully naked more often than the women, and all the sex scenes are cut short right when the action begins. Anyone looking for some naughty indulgence is going to be disappointed.

The story is straight out of the letters column of an old Penthouse. Bored and unhappy with their spouses, the dark-haired Barbie (played by Biller, who is half-Japanese) and her blonde neighbor Shelia (Bridget Brno) decide to experience the sexual revolution. Shelia quickly hooks up with a wealthy old gentleman who can ply her with diamonds and furs, but Barbie, re-christened "Viva" to show her new freedom, only finds one bad affair after another. She tries everything from a gay hairdresser and his bi-sexual hunk of a lover, to a guitar-strumming hippie nudist, to a lesbian model and finally a modern artist. Nothing satisfies her, and things just don't go as planned. All of the "scenes" are tinged with darkness, and the purity of word doesn't translate to purity of action.

Biller apparently created the storyline for "Viva" by looking at advertisements in old men's magazines from the time period, then creating a story around images she liked. Because of this, the plot can be a little jerky, as the characters move to suit the scene rather than the other way around. The visuals are stunning, with an outrageous color palette and era-perfect hair-dos and costumes.

I don't personally think that Biller was as successful as she wanted to be in transmitting her theme of "What is a feminist woman made a 70's sexploitation flick?", and the film often comes off as little more than a comedic parody of the genre. Some scenes are easier to digest than others, and there is some brilliance. The best scene is when one of the male characters talks about how wonderful this time is, with open shirts and women at his beck and call, and a warning that such a paradise for men will not come again.

There is a message to be found here, however, and multiple viewings of "Viva" are probably required to get the full impact. Fans of Russ Meyer's flicks like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls are going to have a blast here, and even if you aren't in the mood to mine the deeper feminist message you can just have a good time with all the bright colors and funky fun.

In 1972 a bored, unhappy housewife in suburban America assumes the name "Viva" and undertakes a risky sexual quest that takes her very far indeed from her ostensibly respectable starting point. As Voltaire's Candide begat Southern & Hoffenberg's Candy, so too has it inspired Anna Biller's remarkable film, VIVA. Revelatory journeys of self-discovery are irresistible to imaginative writers, and with VIVA, Biller (star, writer, producer, director, editor, and designer) has created a brave and very funny addition to that tradition. Although barely into her thirties, Biller has been a filmmaker since 1994, and was successful in theater before that. She's keenly interested in the gaudy detritus of years past, and the myriad of subliminal messages and meanings carried by such objects. Biller's re-creation of 1972, brilliantly shot by C. Thomas Lewis, is simultaneously dead-on accurate, amusingly parodistic, and excitingly artful (her tableaus of the hideously colored finger food Viva labors over for guests is worth the price of admission all by itself). Although structured very much like work by Russ Meyer or Doris Wishman, VIVA subtly subverts the conventions that guided those filmmakers. Meyer and Wishman made films for men, while Biller works for art's sake, and for herself. In the film's frequent soft-core sex scenes, for instance, a bit more attention than one might expect is given to the good-looking male bodies, and Viva's physical reactions are neither as deep nor as satisfying (for us or for Viva) as sex-movie tradition--and the larger culture--has dictated. A protracted nudist-camp sequence that's peppered with gorgeous women is cleverly unsexy, partly because of the passive, insipid nudity of the males. These are subtle things that the viewer will barely register consciously, but the cumulative effect of Biller's thinking is a fresh insight into the maze of contemporary female sexuality. None of this is to suggest that VIVA is stuffy or polemical. To the contrary, it's lively, sharp, and funny. Performances are broad, in the style of sex pictures and other grindhouse fare of the '70s, but they're also incisive and thematically meaningful. Every falsely hearty laugh (costar Mark Sanford, as Viva's horny neighbor, is particularly good at this) and every selfish pout are droll and knowing. As Viva, Biller's intriguing blankness of demeanor isn't just blankness--it's a cleverly calculated representation of female bafflement and frustrated desire, and how they can play out in women's often-bumpy journey to confident self-awareness. And then there's Biller's courage: It's brave enough to direct oneself in a movie, and braver still to direct oneself in the nude. Biller is a very pretty Anglo-Japanese woman whose ripe body is frankly beautiful. Her sex appeal and faint exoticism are apt to be simultaneously pleasing and unsettling to thoughtful viewers. Women may wonder if, by doing numerous scenes unclothed (or by casting herself in the first place), Biller isn't subverting her own subversiveness. Male watchers (and I use the word "watchers" advisedly) may be troubled by their inevitable, primal reaction to Biller's charms, and to the charms of other women in the cast, particularly blonde Bridget Brno, who's wonderfully funny as Viva's sexy, birdbrained best friend. In interviews, Biller has said that it's strange to be a woman, that the whole business of the body maturing and becoming an object of male desire before the mind and emotions are even remotely ready to handle the consequences creates a disconcerting conundrum. Art is one way to deal with that, and because Biller thinks like a conceptual artist, VIVA is an important, highly unusual entertainment.

Many films, even a few indie ones, feel as if they were created by committee, relying on cliche, formula, and even fallacy for their effects. One finishes viewing them hungry for a point of view, for freshness. Viva is without a doubt one of the most ORIGINAL and creative movies to have come along in years. It is beyond category and beyond definition and yet I will try to summarize a response in the space available here. One one level Viva is a witty even farcical nod to soft core sex movies of the early 70s. Indeed, the art direction and design, all of it brilliantly executed by the writer/director and lead Anna Biller, is utterly faithful to the styles of that period. Yet Biller is not content with faithful recreations of any particular genre because Viva is also a movie that succeeds in combining apparently disparate qualities; at once it is a comedy with deep roots in classical Hollywood filmmaking (Billy Wilder comes to my mind) as well as the most serious examination of a woman's spiritual journey as she deals with the tulmutuous effects of recent American history, notably the sexual revolution. In this sense Viva can be enjoyed on many levels and, contrary to some verdicts, is anything but a single themed, parodic sex movie. Yet, for those interested in the erotic, it does offer some of the most erotic moments in recent American cinema. The dialogue is inventive, the acting fascinating, and the color rich in meaning. Watch Viva more than once because there is much more contained therein than initially meets the eye, though what DOES initially meet the eye is always exciting and enlightening.

"She was a housewife seeking kicks, in a world of swingers, drugs, playboys and orgies in the lurid '70s!"

Director, writer, artist, and organ-playing independent filmmaker Anna Biller has created a visual feast of a film with "Viva." Set in 1972 Los Angeles, it tells the story of a bored, neglected housewife who decides to find some adventure in life in the midst of the sexual revolution.

"Viva" is a film one might imagine as a campy, comical version of the classic film "Belle De Jour", as it might have been in part envisioned by Russ Meyer (director of such camp classics as "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!"), with sing and dance numbers, nudity, and a dash of (soft-core) sex thrown into the mix.

What struck me first about "Viva" were the visuals: specifically, the amazing usage of color in every scene, and the authenticity of the decor and clothing. I'm 51, so am of the age to have been a teen in the 1970s. Watching the film has a lot of deja-vu moments for me, in that sense. I have watched it several times and still get caught up completely in Biller's use of color.

Every scene has the colors tied in to each other, in some way, from the colors of the clothing, down to the smallest detail, for instance a loud necktie in one scene is well-coordinated with the wall hanging behind the person wearing it. The colors and sets in films of the 1960s and 1970s had a look and a texture, almost, that is very recognizable, and Biller has gone to great lengths to revisit the look of the time, including a lot of crochet, and other obviously vintage items and clothing from the time. Many of the paintings shown in the movie were painted by Biller and other cast members.

The film is very funny in general, with campy dialogue and great delivery by the entire cast (Biller has mastered the perfect raised eyebrow/pouty lip expression), including the musical numbers (songs written by Biller), and the appropriately 1970s cheesy elevator music in the background adds to the overall effect. If viewing the film without knowing otherwise, it would be easy to think that "Viva" was filmed in 1972.

"Viva" is an instantly classic camp film, and a creative tour de force - I'm looking forward to seeing more of Biller's work.

Note: this review is of the unrated version of "Viva". I first saw the film in its theatrical version when I rented it. The version I bought is the unrated one. Unless memory fails me, the main difference between the two is that the unrated version has more nudity, specifically in a nudist camp sequence. I don't find the nudity offensive; it fits in with the theme of the time depicted, and in fact is funny at times. I personally find the image of Biller's dressed character sitting primly while a couple of naked men standing behind her sway unself-consciously to music irreverantly hilarious, while at the same time relevant to the depiction of her character. It never fails to amaze me that the public can easily view actual photos of brains blown out and other acts of real and simulated violence on regular TV, much less mainstream films, but nudity and sexual themes still never fail to get the censors in a huff.

Ann Biller plays Viva, a bored housewife living in LA, during the early 70s. The story of this film takes place in 1972, when the sexual revolution was in full-swing in suburbia. Viva is a gorgeous young woman, married to a kindly hubby. Viva and her husband, want to be considered a with-it couple. So they decide to start experimenting with spouse-swapping, with the hot-to-trot married couple next door.

Then, Viva decides that she wants to be a model. In order to make it in modeling, Viva winds-up sleeping with some lecherous men, who can help her further her modeling career. She also tries having sex with other women, and finds that lesbianism is an exciting twist for her. Ultimately, Viva participates in orgies, which she considers the pinnacle of sexual sophistication.

But Viva's husband thinks that she's become too caught-up in her sexual explorations, and that she's neglecting him. Viva does become weary, of being treated like just a sexual play-thing. She has to decide, if her superficial carnal pleasures are worth it after all. Especially after her husband threatens to walk out on her, when he gets fed-up with Viva's excessive sexual shenanigans.

This film really captures the spirit of the cheesy, over-the-top 70s sexual revolution. The wild 70s fashions, garishly colorful home decors, and even the party snacks served back then, are meticulously detailed in this film. The actors really ham it up. But that only adds to the hilarious, campy quality of this film. As a spoof, this movie is among the best of it's kind. I highly recommend it.

Now that it is available on DVD to a wide audience, Viva is the kind of film that can become an international cult for decades to come, with legions of fans throwing 70s parties and reenacting its best scenes with tacky costumes, accessories, and music from that time. Beyond the parody, the fun, and the excellent directing, acting, and photography, the movie definitely makes one meditate on how much relationships between men and women, in Western countries, have changed over the past 30 to 40 years... for the best or the worst. The movie can definitely help everyone figuring this one out. A must have film!

"Viva" lacks the sex, the sexiness, and the fun of the good 1970's sexploitation films. This 2007 attempt at recreating 1970's sexploitation movies unfortunately misses the mark in several ways. First, "Viva" primarily tries to satirize and imitate some Russ Meyer films, such as "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", but these films were too tame and artistic to be very fun sexploitation. Second, "Viva" lacks the best part of Russ Meyer's films, namely the trademark buxom beauties. The actresses in "Viva" look okay but they are not quite like Tura Satana. Third, "Viva" does not capture the fun of a good sexploitation film, such as Ed Wood's "Fugitive Girls". For all his faults, Ed Wood had a real passion and sincerity in his work, but that's just turned into sarcastic mockery in "Viva". Where 1970's sexploitation movies had bad acting, "Viva" has extremely bad acting, to the point of great annoyance. Where the good sexploitation movies had natural but sexy naked women having soft core sex, "Viva" has natural naked women that are not filmed in a sexy manner, and they do not have soft core sex. Where the good sexploitation movies had explosive plots with energetic, strong characters, "Viva" has a very lazy and slow plot, with sleepy characters that drift aimlessly. Please just see "Fugitive Girls" instead, and may I say, thank you Ed Wood. Reviewed 2/27/2009 after watching on DVD.

If you enjoy the early films of Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and John Waters, add Ann Biller to your list immediately. A perfect recreation/parody of a 'boogie nights' era drama, that will have you grinning from ear to ear. Like nothing else you've ever seen in this era, for sure!