Viva.

"A waggish conceptual venture, Viva is a startlingly pitch-perfect reproduction of the kind of gauzy sex movies from the 1960s and early 1970s that preceded the hard-core revolution," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Despite the parallels with Sade's Justine and the occasional lurid flourish, the depravity never becomes remotely depraved because [writer-director Anna] Biller, despite her commitment to verisimilitude, maintains an ironic detachment throughout - because she's a Brechtian or a bad actress, or perhaps both."

For Vadim Rizov, writing in the Voice, "Viva does for late-60s/early-70s sexploitation what Far From Heaven did for Douglas Sirk, only without the subversion."

"As one who has seen some of the films that served as inspiration for Viva, my reaction was that audiences might be better served by another viewing of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Camille 2000, perhaps topped off with a bit of Jesus (Franco) and Venus in Furs," suggests Peter Nellhaus.

"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," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "On the other hand, that lighter touch also makes Viva one of the rare skin flicks worth watching for a full two hours."

"Poking fun at the 1970s is like shooting sardines in a can, what with the yin and yang of post-revolution hippies just reaching their nudist burn-out point and forever-square suburbanites pretending to expand their horizons by doing what their bachelor magazines tell them to do," writes Eric Henderson in Slant, "but the film's kicker - in which Barbi is recruited to play a role in a show paying homage to the 1950s because, as the show's director says, 'people are bored to death with nudity' - confirms Biller's self-awareness of the way even parody can be used to simultaneously illuminate and evade the social ills of today."

"Perhaps in the hands of a more able satirist, Viva would sing with social commentary and not so subtle innuendo," writes Meghan Keane in the New York Sun. "But watching Ms Biller take pride in the stilted acting and awkward pacing of her target milieu becomes an endurance test. The fact that it's all on purpose doesn't make it any less irritating to sit through."

Posted by dwhudson at May 4, 2008 1:07 PM