Dallas Video Festival film review: Viva

by John P. Meyer

You've got to credit Anna Biller for... well... just about everything involved with Viva, which she produced (along with co-star Jared Sanford) and directed; she also plays the lead role, in addition to doing the songwriting, painting the artwork that hangs on the walls of the sets, designing the outrageously kitschy 70's costumes and creating the psychedelic Warholish pop-art animation fantasy sequence employed during a key sex scene.

For cripe's sake, she even plays the dang organ. On the soundtrack, I mean.

Viva is a throwback to the softcore porn (think Russ Meyer - no relation, by the way) of the freewheeling "sexual revolution" days when men were men and women of a certain endowment were on hand to serve their every whim. Until they got damn well tired of it and busted out of that scene to satisfy various unexplored whims of their own. Ahem.

Anna portrays a young woman named Barbie (no coincidence) married to a Troy Donahue-lookalike named Rick (Chad England). Rick is into his traveling sales job in a big way, spending so much time away from home that poor Barbie is forced to hang out with a couple of loser neighbors named Mark (Jared Sanford) and Sheila (Bridget Brno). Mark is a boozing out-of-work TV actor who tosses up bad puns and indulges in sly, uproarious laughter at the expense of those around him. Since no one seems to mind it particularly - including his wife, Sheila - he carries on being mean-spirited and lecherous because, well, that seems to be his true nature. In today's more enlightened era, he (along with most of the other male characters in the film, including Barbie's leering and heavy-handed boss) would find himself on the receiving end of either puncture wounds or a sexual harassment lawsuit, depending upon environmental circumstances.

When Rick deserts Barbie for a month-long business trip - two weeks of which will be, by his own admission, totally un-business related - Barb decides to step out and discover what other employment and/or companionship options might prove to be available for a housewife with her set of... ah... skills. Sheila, ever the scamp, suggests they wear transparent blouses and parade around town in micro miniskirts to see what develops. (Seems reasonable.) They end up attracting the attention of an opportunistic madame named Mrs. James (Carole Balkan), who recognizes call girls in the making when she ogles them.

Thus begins a kind of Pilgrim's Progress through the moral and emotional minefield of everything the swinging seventies was notorious for, including (as advertised) swinging, drug use, blaze orange leisure suits (aargh!), transparent pink baby doll lingerie, English Leather cologne, Crown Royal whiskey (along with dozens of other booze brands), bouffant hairdos, Swedish meatballs on toothpicks (man, I miss those!), housework in high heels, phones on cords, and - it's gotta be said - pubic hair. Refreshingly absent from the scene: breast implants.

About halfway through the two-hour production, musical numbers begin cropping up in the storyline, and they prove to be both entertaining and amusing, causing one to speculate that perhaps more of these might have been incorporated in earlier sequences to cut down on the rather over-extended exposition. Two hours for this film is just too long.

The social posturing and Age of Aquarius morally ambiguous bullshit on display are captured to a tee by Ms. Biller, who has also perfected the Lucy Liu eyelift, which she pulls frequently from her repertoire of facial expressions. She (along with most of the other players) also disrobes frequently, which should in no way be construed as a complaint, but is offered as a point of interest only.

My favorite acting performance is the over-the-top portrayal put in by Barry Morse as Sherman, a sashaying hairdresser who laces a couple of "refreshing shakes" with "magic dust" in order to loosen up both Barbie's inhibitions and those of his repressed gay neighbor, Reeves (Cole Chipman). The acting across the board is overwrought and melodramatic, which is just what the director had in mind, I'm thinking.

If you like your nudity full frontal and your sex simulated, then Viva (screening tonight, Aug. 1, at 9 p.m. at the Angelika Dallas) might just be your ticket to retro-porn heaven.