Biller's film is to the films of Radley Metzger and Russ Meyer what Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven was to Douglas Sirk, only perhaps a little bit cannier and a lot less dryly academic about its postmodern tweaks.
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05/01/08
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Viva (2008)
53
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Reviews Counted:38
Fresh:20
Rotten:18
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: Though it's lengthy and doesn't always walk the line between schlock and kitschy homage successfully, Viva's lovely visuals and knowing humor are undeniable.
Theatrical Release:May 2, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: VIVA is about a bored housewife in 1972 who gets sucked into the sexual revolution. Abandoned by her husband, Barbi is dragged into trouble by her girlfriend, who spouts women's lib as she gets... [More]
Starring: Anna Biller, Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno, Chad England
Director: Anna Biller
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Reviews for Viva
The film is the cinematic equivalent of greeting cards which poke fun at beehive-haired wives getting slippers for their pipe-smoking husbands, with a rude word inserted in a speech bubble. Not funny.
05/15/09
Viva the film is as sly and knowing as Viva the character is endearingly oblivious.
05/08/08
This is an arch, knowing exercise in cinematic parody where every line of dialogue seems to come with inverted commas. Stretched over two hours it becomes unbearable.
05/15/09
Where her film lets itself down, though, is it's simply not funny; you assume that a certain kind of hipster audience may be tickled by all this, but the laughs will be as forced as those that bray out of the screen at all too regular intervals.
05/15/09
Anna Biller's pastiche of '70s sexploitation flicks finds its G-spot somewhere between misogyny and feminism. It's a transgressive joy - if somewhat overlong.
05/15/09
Trimming a quarter of the running time would have better enabled the vibrant vita of Biller’s vision to amuse audiences.
10/18/08
Bums and bosoms are in abundance, although there's not enough plot to go around, meaning you'll feel every minute of that two-hour running time.
05/15/09
Completely devoid of cinematic wit, sensuality or even simple technique.
05/02/08
There is barely an out and-out gag — and certainly none that’s funny — in the whole two hours of deliberately bad acting.
05/17/09
Viva is, without a doubt, the work of an artist, as Anna Biller has crafted a painstakingly brilliant replica of a '70s sexploitation film, with all the pros and cons in place.
04/03/09
With its copious nudity and zipless hedonism, Viva, though unduly long, is a crafty reminder of a time when the X rating was flaunted, not feared.
06/20/08
The campy early '70s is the goofy gift that keeps on giving in Viva, a mock soft-core sexploitation film that gets a lot right but forgets that less is often more, especially in plaid.
05/02/08
Great retro design, but as comic satire this isn't so much soft-focus as out of focus.
05/15/09
What's best about the production is how it faithfully conforms to the sensibilities of the Sixties' skin flick genre, except perhaps for adding an anachronistic dash of refreshing female empowerment to the mix.
04/30/08
Its triumph is that of style -- gloriously and revoltingly tacky style -- over substance.
03/07/08
Anna Biller set out to make a bad movie and succeeded.
05/02/08
The nastiest transgression committed by this anything-goes romp is its length.
05/01/08
A startlingly pitch-perfect reproduction of the kind of gauzy sex movies from the 1960s and early 1970s that preceded the hard-core revolution.
05/02/08
For all its garish aesthetics, sly feminism and wall-to-wall nudity, writer/director Anne Biller’s camp-com is almost too much of a good thing, outstaying its welcome at a paint-drying two hours.
05/15/09
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