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VIVA
Directed by Anna Biller. Starring Anna Biller, Bridget Brno, Jared Sanford. Mar 21-24. Metro Cinema (Zeidler Hall, The Citadel).
3 Stars

Funky Hammond organ and flute jams, martinis at poolside, tacky polyester clothing, and wife-swapping? 

Why, it can only be Los Angeles circa 1972, ground zero for the sexual revolution that’s just penetrating the American suburbs. Viva follows sex-kitten-in-training Barbi (director/writer Anna Biller) and her nymphet neighbour Sheila (Bridget Brno), both restless and at loose ends after their respective husbands have left them. Drifting to the city, they’re spotted by a talent-seeking madam who sets them up as prostitutes, assuring them they’ll have as much adventure as they desire.

Sheila immediately hooks up with an elderly billionaire, but Barbi (newly self-christened as “Viva”) instead opts for a series of sexual misadventures that take her from a free love chanting nudist guru (Paolo Davanza) to a stage director (John Klemantaski) to a model (Robbin Ryan) and a hipster artist (Marcus DeAnda). Despite these erotic encounters, Viva resists total immersion in the milieu, attempting to stand apart from more willing participants in the sexual free-for-all going on around her. 

Multi-hyphenate helmer Anna Biller’s satire of ’60s and ’70s softcore sexploitation flicks is admittedly spot-on, but whether that makes it completely enjoyable is another matter entirely. Ostensibly a deconstruction of the genre, it actually seems at times more like a faithful and even loving reproduction—with all of the problems that entails. The hallmarks of the genre are there—wooden acting, bad dialogue, brightly lit sets with saturated colors, progressively more ridiculous situations—but once Viva makes its point, two more hours of reiteration just feels like overkill. 

As with the films Viva is based on, there’s much less sex here than titillation, but Biller doesn’t stint on the nudity, nor does she shy away from unveiling her own attributes when needed. Another obvious antecedent is the look of Playboy magazine—the publication is both referenced and seen in the film—and especially the Harvey Kurtzman/Will Elder strip Little Annie Fanny, which follows a busty naïf not unlike Viva, and her constant battle with the lascivious attention of men around her.

Knowing winks at the clumsy rhetoric of the times are well played, as are the musical sequences—“Love is good for the birds, it’s good for the trees,” warbles one nude hippie troubadour, an earnest smile on his face. “It’s good for you and me.” An orgy heaves into pulsing psychedelic orgasm, busting out into an over-the-top depiction of clichés both sexual and racial. (Black men pounding on congas!) 

It’s perhaps too self-conscious (and definitely too long) for its own good, but there are enough moments in Viva to make it worthwhile. And for those who lament a long-gone era and a mindset, and who might be too distracted by all that flesh to spot Biller’s point, there’s a line spoken directly to the camera by one of Viva’s suitors, a weasel of a man who later violently forces himself on our heroine.

“There’s never been a better time to be a man,” he says. “The sense of entitlement! Enjoy this time, for it will soon be gone, never to return.”