Due in part to the casual
frankness of dime-store paperbacks and Playboy magazine, sex became a legitimate subject for movies
by the '60s, though scattered filmmaking outposts handled the matter
differently. The emerging European art cinema treated sex as part of the
natural, seen-but-unremarked-upon background of adult life, while in Hollywood,
a string of winking romantic comedies put sex front-and-center but coyly
avoided anything even remotely explicit or honest. And in drive-ins and
grindhouses, low-budget auteurs promised to expose on screen what others only
talked about in whispers, although more often than not what they really offered
was cheap titillation and dispiriting moralism.
Anna Biller's debut feature Viva consciously combines elements of all of the above,
offering a painstaking recreation of the look and feel of campy retro
sexploitation. Biller stars as a California housewife circa 1972, who changes
her name to "Viva" and embarks on a journey through the sexual revolution after
her husband moves out. Prostitution, nudist colonies, guerilla theater, furtive
lesbian encounters, Hollywood orgies—Viva tries them all. But while
Biller doesn't spare the sordidness or the skin, Viva veers between intellectualized pastiche and absurdly
tongue-in-cheek—which means the movie lacks sexploitation's pervasive
sense of shame. From the winking shots of housewives reading Decorating With
Crochet to the multiple cheery
musical numbers, Viva may be a
smidgen too "fun" to be a true replica of its source material.
On the other hand, that
lighter touch also makes Viva one
of the rare skin flicks worth watching for a full two hours. (Although it
definitely sags in places, no pun in-…well, okay, pun intended.) Biller is
clearly positioning Viva as a
comment on the moment in history when the political ideals of the '60s got
bound up with the new freedoms of the '60s, and how once women realized that
being coerced into drunken sex with strangers wasn't as much fun as they'd
hoped, they lost some interest in "liberation" in general. Viva's characters nervously mock their own worldliness, as
they grab a jug of scotch and a girlie mag and cackle, "Now I'm all set! Coffee
and the morning paper!" And yet Biller obviously feels for these plywood people
she's created. She surrounds them with rich color and eye-popping décor, and
fills them with the awareness that as awkward as their sex games may be, they
may one day miss what they stood for.