Viva

Viva, about the adventures of a bored housewife who takes part in the sexual revolution in California in about 1970, has many qualities and charms and some of them are indeed involved with the campy form. For instance, careful attention is paid to the colourful sets, costumes and hairstyles. Film maker Anna Biller took years to collect the most colourful and bizarre items of clothing and props. The bodies of the actors and extras seem to date from an era before that of fitness culture – not easy to find in California.
Biller also plays the leading role. Barbie is young, curious and naïve. When her husband leaves for a ski resort, she goes looking for love or, yes, something or someone to match her. Together with an adventurously oriented girlfriend, she first finds herself in a brothel, then with a marijuana smoking nudist/guru, and then with a glamour photographer – and everywhere people are only interested in one thing.
The scenes follow one another at a calm, relaxed tempo, entirely in the tradition of genre examples such as Radley Metzgers’ Camille 2000. In the end, a fascination emerges that is anything but superficial: Viva makes it possible to see the way sexual morality and women’s liberation have been portrayed for 40 years in media, art and film from a different angle. And have we mentioned that the film was shot on 35mm? (GT)