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VIVA PRESS KIT
A suburban housewife in 1972 goes out to find herself in the middle of the Playboy-era
Viva, Color, 120 minutes, Dolby Digital
Projection Format: 35mm, 1:85 Genres: Sexploitation, Comedy, B-movie, Cult, Art Director, Producer, Writer, Editor, Designer: Anna Biller Co-Producer: Jared Sanford Cinematographer: C. Thomas Lewis See Full Cast and Crew Principal Cast: Anna Biller, Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno, Chad England, Marcus DeAnda, John Klemantaski See Cast Page  
View: Viva TrailerDownload: Viva Presskit
SHORT SYNOPSIS
A suburban housewife in 1972 is abandoned by her husband, and goes out to find herself in the middle of the swinging Playboy-era sexual revolution. Looking for love and adventure, she explores nudist colonies, orgies, prostitution, bisexuality, and bohemia, becoming a Candide of the 1970's and finding liberation along the way.
See VIVA page
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BIO: ANNA BILLER First time feature-director Anna Biller has completed a number of short films, including the acclaimed horror-western short A Visit from the Incubus, as well as several stage musicals. Her work has shown at film festivals and art spaces around the world, and has been favorably reviewed in many prestigious publications. She is known for her use of film genres, humor, the burlesque, and visual excess to talk about female roles within culture, and for her colorful stylized sets and costumes, which she creates herself. She has a BA in art from UCLA and an MFA in art and film from CalArts. See Anna Biller's page | |||
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DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In the film VIVA, I am reworking old sexploitation movies from the 60's and early 70's, from a woman's point of view. Vintage sexploitation films interest me because they revolve around fantasies of a woman's power over the male, her beauty, her desirability, her sex appeal. The idea was to make a movie that seems like a sexploitation movie, and that offers up all the spectacle and lurid promise of that genre, while at the same time talking about what women really go through, their fantasies and sexual trials.
To create a distinctive look for VIVA, I looked through a bunch of decorating books and magazines, some vintage Playboy magazines, and some late 60's films. I would tear out magazine pages, absorb the atmosphere, daydream, and then write scenes based on what I imagined was going on in the different ads and cartoons, or design sets based on the weird rooms or movie scenes I saw. It's a very psychedelic and colorful film, but that's the way the 70's looked, even in suburbia. All that acid green and yellow, all that orange, brown, blue, purple, and red.
I spent months making costumes, collecting objects from thrift stores, doing macramé. I made the film much like a gallery artist makes work, one installation at a time. We had 34 sets and I wore 34 costumes in the film, plus we had about 150 actors, all of whom had to be costumed and wigged, not to mention all the upholstery, drapes, paintings. But it was possible because of spending a couple of years doing one scene at a time, on weekends spread far apart.
The most difficult thing about doing this film was directing while acting half-dressed and...IN THE NUDE! I was copying the sexploitation genre, so I felt I had to do the nudity, especially since my co-star opted out of it. I've always been terrified of nudity, so it was good therapy to get over the trauma and just do it. My shyness comes through in the film, making me seem like a victim, although I am in control as the director. So there's this weird split. It's very far-out.
Because my impressions of that time are from early childhood, VIVA has a strange innocence, like a child's view of a grown-up sex world. But that also makes it very unhinged and emotionally intense, much like the actual films from the time, where these types of images were new, fresh, and taboo. I see VIVA as totally original, but also as part of a new wave of sexually challenging and disturbing films that have recently gained notoriety in the independent film world, including the smart and daring films of Ms. Catherine Breillat.
See Anna's Blog
Press: Download High-Resolution Photos Here!
 
 
 
 Photo Credit: 1, 4, 6-12, 14-18: Steve Dietl. 2, 3,13: Karl Lohninger. 5: Mariel Lohninger. All images copyright Anna Biller. Duplication without permission is expressly forbidden.
SELECTED PRESS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Viva" {is} a meticulously designed re-imagining of "classy"-minded '70's-era soft porn--boy meets girl, but more important, girl meets free love--that pays as much attention to the realities of the sexual revolution for women as it does the get-it-on aura of wet-bar aesthetics, polyester, peekaboo nudity and color-saturated interior decor. It converts an earlier male generation's notion of swinger gratification into the pitfalls for females of the unfulfilled tease. Biller stars (and strips) as a neglected Los Angeles housewife named Barbi who experiments with looser sexuality by becoming a call girl, only to find that her fantasies and those of the men she encounters hardly mesh. Simply put, the movie pops with parodic joy--in the hoary double-entendres and presentational acting styles--and hotly lighted 35-millimeter cinematography that evokes lounge music album covers and Playboy ads. --Robert Abele
VARIETY
Its titular heroine a neglected housewife drifting into all the sexual revolution mischief 1972 Los Angeles has to offer, "Viva" is a spot-on spoof of low-grade '60s/early '70s sexploitation pics. It's the first feature from multihyphenate Anna Biller, who's made some memorable shorts in a similar vein.
Voluptuous Barbi (Biller) is bored, since hunky hubby Rick (Chad England) is a workaholic, indifferent to her needs. She first finds diversion in swinging neighbors Mark (Jared Sanford) and Sheila (Bridget Brno). When latter duo split up, and Rick stomps out following an argument, Barbi and Sheila decide to explore their wild sides.
Sheila finds an elderly billionaire to milk for furs and jewels. Looking for love as well as adventure, Barbi instead experiences a series of wrong-turn liaisons that encompass a gay hairdresser (Barry Morse) and his ostensibly uber-heterosexual neighbor (Cole Chipman); a Free Love-espousing hippie nudist (Paolo Davanza); an avant-garde stage director (John Klemantaski); a Sapphic model (Robbin Ryan); and a modern artist (Marcus DeAnda) so hip he has a Liverpool accent. Latter, whom she's been holding out on, drugs Barbi during a climactic orgy sequence that tips hat to Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and Radley Metzger's "Camille 2000."
Indeed, pic itself is a chronologically progressive tribute to pre-porn sexploitation from the early '60s onward, initially aping suggestive but tame exploiters like "Sin in the Suburbs." Then breasts are bared in the mode of "nudie cuties" by Doris Wishman, Herschell Gordon Lewis and such, followed by a riot of gratuitous full-frontal nudity (sans actual sexual activity).
"Viva" (the moniker Barbi takes on when she decides to create a "new, liberated me") is faithful to those cult-adored obscurities in nearly every detail, including their soporific pace. Here, however, sly in-jokes come often enough to make said pacing funny in itself. Performances are slightly stilted or over-the-top in ways true to the original genre. Musical backing is actual swingin' instrumental muzak of the period.
Biller takes inspiration not just from Z-grade pics of her favorite era, but also from its Playboy magazine aesthetic and TV cologne/liquor commercials. Her production design is a triumph of dedicated thrift-shop acquisition, with decor as much as drop-dead costumes amplifying the cheesiest aspects of early '70s flamboyance.
C. Thomas Lewis' cinematography heightens color to an eye-popping degree, while his compositions delightfully reproduce all the era's lower-budget conventions. --Dennis Harvey
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
Some things, though, sell better than amateur soccer tournaments and DVD downloads: sex and politics, for instance, and in Rotterdam two American films certainly hit those marks. An uncannily dead-on tribute to softcore 1970's exploitation cinema, Anna Biller's Viva, follows one extremely vivacious, extremely bored California housewife Barbi (Biller) as she and her best girlfriend take advantage of their husbands' absences to become call girls, "it" girls and more in a SoCal slip-and-scotch sex underground of swingers' clubs, brothels and nudist resorts. Part tongue-in-cheek send-up of softcore cinema, part reverent homage to that nightgown-and-Naugahyde era, Viva was a hit with its late-night, beer-fueled Dutch audiences, and was one of the American discoveries of the festival. --Jason Sanders
KINOKULTURA
The striking revelation of Moscow's competition was the American feature Viva (2007), the wild and campy debut of multi-tasker Anna Biller, who wrote, directed, edited, produced, designed costumes and sets, and composed the music. She obviously stars in this bizarre tribute to the soft-core films of the 1960s and 1970s, sadly slashed by local critics and audiences alike. The phoniness in Viva is innovative and perfectly matches the innocence of its main heroine, a bored housewife called Barbi looking for sexual liberation by reinventing herself as a prostitute named Viva. Here she is, facing a delirious world of predators who want to tempt her in their web of dirty games, to use and abuse her naÏveté. The heroine's journey put aside, what is truly remarkable in this extravagant, colorful, and enthusiastic exercise of style is what lies beneath its glitzy surface. For all its implied artificiality, kitschy characters, and phony dialogues, Viva rings true in its depiction of the surrounding falseness. It recalls Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967), remade by Almodovar in 2005. Biller takes a huge risk in playing this audacious game with her audience, who might be too blinded by the assumed kitsch and clumsiness to see that the satiric joy of her enterprise serves as a tool for a cynical take on sexuality and empowerment. The movie may look dumb, but it makes you smarter--and that's the paradox. --Mihai Chirilov, FIPRESCI jury chairman READ FULL REVIEW
THE AGE
Anna Biller's parody of '70s sexploitation films has a serious core, writes Gabriella Coslovich. With her bright blue eye shadow, tangerine lipstick, short black dress and fishnet stay-ups, American director and unashamed feminist Anna Biller is attracting furtive glances from businessmen in the foyer of the Westin hotel. While they may secretly ogle, they're unlikely to make remarks to Biller's face, as do the stiffly coiffed men in her film about a halcyon time when men were insufferably sexist - and got away with it. "There has never been a better time to be a man," says the sleazy, heavily cologned "Mark" in Biller's debut feature, Viva, a hilarious spoof on '70s sexploitation films. The film is an elaborate exercise in style, with sets that meticulously recreate the clashing designs of '70s decor: mustard-coloured walls, floral drapes, wood paneling, lino floors, shag pile rugs, wood-veneer ice buckets, macramé plant holders and the costumes, oh the costumes, to die for - crocheted orange bikinis, floaty negligees, floral shift dresses and matching headbands, bold-printed maxi dresses, white boots and minis - in all, a gaudy visual pleasure chest for fetishists of the era. The film is a campy parody of the times and its advertisements and magazines, particularly Playboy, which perpetuated the myth that life was one big shag-fest...{more} --Gabriella Coslovich
SCREEM MAGAZINE
The next queen of cult filmdom is unquestionably Anna Biller. This Los Angeles-based filmmaker has a fierce aesthetic, a heavy work ethic and a definite, singular vision. Biller is best known for her expressionistic use of color, insistence on costumes, sets and stylized lighting. Furthermore, she is deeply sincere in what she does. Where lesser hands would feature settings with pink wallpaper decorated with gold plaster angels and encourage the audience to snicker at its camp excess, Biller would use that very same setting because she finds it beautiful - and insists that her audience find it beautiful as well. Biller is taking the world by storm with Viva (2006), her take on the sexploitation films of the Seventies. While Biller says her main source of inspiration for the film came from the elegant erotic films of Radley Metzger, many other things came to this writer's mind while watching it: TV's Love, American Style!, the odd attempts at low budget filmmakers trying to craft lavish Ross Hunter melodramas without money such as Love Me Like I Do (1971), Herschell Gordon Lewis' Suburban Roulette (1967), Blood Mania (1971) and Point of Terror (1971) all seemed to have served as unconscious inspirations for the project...{more} --Greg Goodsell
PANORAMA
(Click here to read the original French review) {Viva} fully satisfies the expectations of film lovers in search of a completely exploded comedy of manners. Like a retro carnal circus amplified by a thousand, reenacting the fantasies of a past epoch, Viva emerges on every front as a brilliant success; and one is forced to admit that the aesthetic risk-taking is the principal attraction. After all, the film culminates in a zealously directed Grand-Guignolesque musical number of a medieval orgy directly inspired by the smart psychedelic parties in Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. However, the true surprise reserved for underground cinema fans is that Biller's film is curiously less naive than that of the recent Shortbus by John Cameron Mitchell on the "free" love and the liberalization of sexuality...{more}--Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau
PEGASUS NEWS
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...{more} --John P. Meyer
CASHIERS DU CINEMART
VIVA (Anna Biller, 2007) I went into the Fantasia screening of VIVA expecting a faithful recreation of/homage to early-seventies exploitation movies, along the lines of such recent indies as PERVERT! and SLAUGHTERHOUSE OF THE RISING SUN. VIVA is that exploitation tribute, for sure, but it's a lot more: a musical, a campy, surreal comedy, and a cutting satire on sexual politics in general and the sexual revolution specifically. Sometimes it's all of these things at the same time, leaving the viewer as bewildered as its protagonist, suburban housewife/call girl Barbi, played by writer/producer/director/star Anna Biller. But it's all part of the plan, making VIVA one of the most original indies in a long time. The film is set in suburbia, 1972, a world that is obsessively realized in the movie's costumes and production design (also handled by Biller): it's as authentic a recreation of that era's movies as anyone will ever make. Barbi Smith is a devoted young housewife who always makes sure dinner is on the table for her businessman husband Rick (Chad England) and is always ready with his slippers when he comes home from work. She loves Rick, but she's also bored, and has been reading issues of Viva and Playboy while she takes her many baths. There's a sexual revolution going on and Barbi wants in! Her sexy neighbor Sheila (Bridget Brno) feels the same way. When both of their husbands leave them, it's time to break out the see-through blouses and have an adventure. They soon sign up to work at an escort service ("I've always wanted to be a prostitute. It sounds so romantic!" says Sheila), and assume new identities, with Sheila becoming Candi and Barbi taking the name Viva. Sheila soon hooks an elderly rich guy who gives her everything she wants, including a white horse. Barbi has a tougher time, having bummer encounters with one loser after another, getting more and more abuse heaped onto her as she runs a gauntlet of nudists, swingers, would-be "artists" and assorted weirdos. Everything is played with an exaggerated, stylized tone, which adds to the campy humor. But as it goes on, Barbi's trials become more painful to watch, as she (and the audience) begins to realize that despite the "free love" hype during the sexual revolution, things didn't suddenly become as equal for women as they were made out to be. Without realizing it, you actually start to care about Barbi, and even her asshole husband Rick; they go from being comic caricatures to real characters, without the movie ever dropping its hilariously deadpan, campy sensibilities. After all the laughs, musical numbers, and outrageous performances (Barry Morse as Sherman is at least tied with Skip E. Lowe's Artie from BLACK SHAMPOO as the screen's ultimate gay hairdresser), I walked out of VIVA thinking mostly about just how much heart it has. It's a great feature debut from Biller, and I can't wait for the "circus sex witch" follow-up she described in her Fantasia Q&A. --Rich Osmond
MONTREAL MIRROR
If Tarantino's mind-blowing Death Proof (the second half of this summer's Grindhouse which incomprehensibly flopped) was a "chick-flick" as seen through the eyes of a male, Anna Biller's feature film directorial debut Viva is just the opposite using the same inspirational sources: low budget 70's exploitation! Biller was director, producer, writer, editor, set and costume designer and lead actress (!) of this remarkable epic, approaching the making of it as a gallery artist would: one installation at a time over several years! And it"s a musical to boot! Though she was too young to have fully grasped firsthand the era she grew up in being emulated, she says this worked to her advantage because it made her bring a similarly innocent POV she claims most of the films back then were largely driven by, clumsily breaking taboos and forging virgin sexual frontiers!... {more}--Rick Trembles
INDIEWIRE
New York Underground Film Festival opened this years event with a screening of Anna Biller's homage to 70s sexploitation films, "Viva." Meticulously constructed--from the cheesy acting and stilted direction to the shag sets and vintage film stock--"Viva" is a pitch perfect resurrection of the "Valley of the Dolls" days of cinema. Starring Biller herself as a repressed housewife, slowly discovering her sexuality through a series of increasingly racy encounters, "Viva" takes us on a self-reflexive trip back to the 70s, imbuing us with that naughty spirit that the NYUFF audience yearly seems yearning for. When asked about the referential nature of her work, Biller said, "It's all I've ever done." She laughed, "I have trouble taking myself seriously and I watch a lot of movies." Luckily, those are the magic ingredients to creating this dish. --Michael Lerman
THE BOSTON PHOENIX
For a tongue-in-cheek and slyly insightful look at the conflict between innocence and desire, curiosity and taboo, bad taste and kitsch genius, I'd recommend Anna Biller's VIVA (2007; Brattle March 24 at 9:15 pm, with Biller). She writes, directs, and stars in this sui generis pastiche of a John Waters/Frank Tashlin/Douglas Sirk/David Lynch parodic morality tale; she even designed the outrageous, candy-colored sets and costumes. Her Barbi is a buxom, vacant-eyed, heavily made-up housewife in '70s LA who's not quite aware enough to realize that she's bored and exploited. She's lost her job as a secretary after responding poorly to sexual harassment, and when her workaholic, Tab Hunter-like hubby (Viva wavers in period style and sensibility from the '50s to the '70s) storms out after a spat, she decides to seek "adventures" with her mercenary next-door neighbor, Sheila. A grandmotherly madam obliges them in Belle du jour fashion, sending them off to meet clients attuned to their needs. For Sheila, now "Candy," that means codgers willing to provide her with a girl's best friend; for Barbi, reborn as "Viva," that means someone "kind and sensitive"--not easy to find among the gloriously realized '70s male grotesques in Biller's sweetly ruthless satire. --Peter Keough SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Biller is bringing kinky back in a way that few women directors have ever dared... (more)--Delfin Vigil
GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE One of the most strikingly individual talents to emerge in the realm of art cinema in recent years, Los Angeles-based Anna Biller makes movies that revel in kitsch, while simultaneously commenting on it. Imagine the camp of John Waters and the erotic excesses of Russ Meyer, blended with the satirical blasphemy of Luis Bunuel and the deliberately awful performances found in the films of George Kuchar, and you have an idea of what Biller is after. Her first feature, Viva, is the story of a woman's discovery that follows Barbi (played by Biller herself ), a suburban housewife in 1972 who's abandoned by her race-car-driving husband. Barbi finds herself at the center of the swinging sexual revolution, and is introduced to the joys of bisexuality, nudist colonies, pornographic modeling, and prostitution. It's a send-up of the vintage sexploitation movie that also manages to seriously explore contemporary and personal issues of sexuality. Biller is the complete auteur: she not only writes, directs, produces, and stars, but also edits, composes music, and most important, designs her own sets and costumes. Eye-poppingly vivid and sometimes shockingly, deliberately grotesque, Anna Biller's work is something special to discover. --Jim Healy
GIJON FILM FESTIVAL If the camera was in Peeping Tom a representation of a repressed, aggressive phallus, then Anna Biller's is playful, extroverted clit. Biller has the merit of being one of the few women who play with sex behind the camera. In her case, besides, in front of it and over it and next to it: director, designer, actress, decorator, choreographer... A multifaceted woman whose world playfully unfolds to reveal pleasure, free will, scenic frenzy, parasexual metamorphoses and above all, brassiness. Unabashed, unlimited brassiness which makes fun even of what has not been shot yet, and that is why her regressions to the shrink's chair of peace and love in the 60's and 70's are probably parodies more than vindications. Some might find some Russ Meyer or blaxploitation in her work, to categorise her in a male framework. As if she needed to be categorised, as if she was not capable of reinventing instead of copying, being herself instead of imitating her male colleagues...[more]
FAB MAGAZINE Much of my exposure to the world of underground films came from late nights spent navigating the realm of cable, looking for skin and scandal. Midnight movies courtesy of art-house networks turned me on to '60s and '70s kitsch chick flicks like Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! and Mark Robson's Valley of the Dolls. These retro sexploitation flicks reveled in their outlandish depiction of sexuality while celebrating a sense of freedom and taboo filth a gay man couldn't help but love. It's time to love again. The sensibility of these films is no longer a thing of the past, thanks to cinematic temptress Anna Biller and her new film Viva. With a plot stripped from a 1969 letter to Penthouse magazine, Viva tells the story of Barbi, a tired and naive housewife who sets out to discover the dark and seedy underbelly of the sexual revolution. With her best friend Sheila in tow, she encounters everything from prowling cougars, grandmotherly brothel madams and lesbian supermodels to full-blown sex orgies. Toss in a chiseled silk-robe sporting gay hairdresser who seduces his neighbor with "magic powder," a funk-gasmic soundtrack and some surreal David Lynch-esque animated and musical sequences and you've got one smoking hot slice of nouveau cult cinema. Everybody in this film nails their clichéd roles with perfectly cheesy and self-assured B-movie style delivery. The performances, including Biller's own star turn as our vixen heroine, are executed with such skill and bizarro craft that they avoid parody and build a seamless homage to smut. Biller's truly amazing accomplishment in Viva comes courtesy of her uncannily authentic design. It doesn't emulate the spirit of those swinging times, it's possessed by them. Just one whiff of the cheap cologne, one glance at the rugged polyester, and you'll have to submit to this killer escapade. --Matt Thomas
EYE WEEKLY The title of Viva of course means "to live," and its eponymously named (or rather pseudonymed) heroine does enough living for several movies - if not the entire sexploitation subgenre. Sensing a change in the backyard-poolside air, stifled So Cal hausfrau Barbi (writer-director Anna Biller) ditches the kitchen and goes sex-kitten, getting drugged, duped and groped by various high-fashion photographers, hippies and husbands (including her own) along the path to superstardom. With its painstakingly tacky early-'70s aesthetic and fleshy, Radley Metzgerian set pieces, Viva wears its pastiche on its (flared) sleeve, but there's something more here than a mere exercise in art direction. Biller, a noted short filmmaker with art-scene cred, has crafted a film about the sexual revolution of the '70s informed by several decades' worth of hindsight. She approximates the leering gaze of the period's porn-meisters while retaining a contemporary female sensibility - Viva the film is as sly and knowing as Viva the character is endearingly oblivious. --Adam Nayman
VUE WEEKLY "This is Jonathan. He likes really glamourous women." That's how I was once introduced, several years ago, by a friend to a visiting artist at a new media festival in Saskatoon. I wasn't terribly offended, but I felt like I'd been figured out. So filmmaker and actress Anna Biller should be my kind of woman, and I don't even sleep with girls. Her new erotic feature Viva stars herself as a dissatisfied housewife whose husband leaves her at home too often, ultimately forcing her to abandons her roost and join the circus. Sexy circus, that is. Barbi (Biller) is fired from her job as a secretary for refusing to be "promoted" by her boss. She takes sudden interest in a potential career as a catalogue model, only to shy away as she fears the impact it has on her marriage. But her husband Rick (Chad England) has greater concern for business trips and sport leisure than his wife, and she strays off into the call girl industry with her best friend, Sheila (Bridget Brno). The wild life takes a great liking to Barbi, who quickly changes her name to Viva, and it's not long before it starts to complicate her life. She encounters a cavalcade of great characters in bad wigs, many of whom vie for her affections until she's the centre of it all. But Barbi soon questions how long she can maintain the lifestyle, especially when there doesn't seem to be anybody left that she can trust. Biller's film is like a memorable conversation with somebody at a party who sincerely admires the sexploitation films that began in the late 1960s, particularly those of Radley Metzger, Herschell Gordon Lewis and especially Russ Meyer, whose Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is directly referenced in a fast-paced, stunning orgy sequence. It's a fiesta of gold speedos, transparent bras, and lots and lots of pubic hair. Biller fetishizes the period to such an extent that she centres her entire film around it, including maintaining a bizarrely banal plot and extended sequences of titties and psychedelic music. The film runs at two hours, providing an experience of excessive wank material that's not a far cry from the predecessors. And of course, there's plenty of subtext that allows a post-feminist deconstruction of irony in the hands of women filmmakers, though it's so underhanded in Viva that it will be a long time before university collectives start re-enacting the film as a method of raising awareness. Unless, of course, that awareness regards the glory of re-creating kitsch décor, which in the case of Viva, become visual quotations of what it might have looked like to live as an adult during the sexual revolution. It's the perfect date movie for couples so bound up in their own cynicism that they're able to classify the vocal style and range of their orgasms into eras before they were born. --Jonathan Busch
NATIONAL POST What little I know of 1970s sexploitation films comes from modern parody; for instance, I thought there always had to be a pizza delivery guy in one scene. As a result, Viva, a loving homage to bad dialogue and oops-my-clothes-came-off nudity, struck me as a documentary; educational, but with breasts. Sheila (Bridget Brno) and Barbi (Anna Biller) are bored suburban housewives in 1972 Los Angeles. We meet them during a backyard party with their husbands, who do so much mugging for the camera it's a wonder they aren't arrested for assault. The women don't walk through the scene; they sashay. When the name-your-viceaholic husbands (work-and sex-respectively) briefly split from their spouses, Sheila and Barbi decide to become liberated women and head downtown to see what mischief they can get into. "I've always wanted to be a prostitute," Sheila enthuses, calling herself Candy. Barbi, finding her name too frumpy, chooses to be known as Viva. Over the next few weeks, Viva meets a hairdresser who can only be referred to as mincing, a sensitive type named Clyde (sensitive being a relative term in this movie; Clyde wins the prize because he appreciates women for their personalities and their asses), a hippie from what the nudist-camp scene in A Shot in the Dark would have looked like if it were R-rated, and various other bohemians. Settling into her Viva lifestyle, she starts to feel that something is missing; could it be that dull but loving workaholic husband? Biller, who plays Viva, also wrote, directed, produced and edited this movie, and she clearly cornered the world market on chintz, tassels and shag in her work as costume and production designer. (Seems she did everything short of fluffing.) The result is definitely not a parody (note: no pizza guy) but doesn't take itself seriously, either. Without making it sound too stilted, the film seems a bit of an exercise in time travel: Can one make a 1972 movie more than 35 years on, with all the gaudy colours, psychedelic references and so-naughty-it's-nice nudity? Biller delivers a resounding "yes." As one of her characters says, "This is going to be the freshest thing since Liberace!" Whether you're mildly prurient, a touch prudish or just, you know, curious, this is an intriguing trip, from its opening credits in a font last used for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, through its on-screen costume changes to its final Hammond organ chords. --Chris Knight
SCREEN REVIEW Viva does for tacky '70s softcore porn what "Far From Heaven" did for old Douglas Sirk movies Funky Hammond organ and flute jams, martinis at poolside, tacky polyester clothing, and wife-swapping? Why, it can only be Los Angeles circa 1972, ground zero for the sexual revolution that's just penetrating the American suburbs. Viva follows sex-kitten-in-training Barbi (director/writer Anna Biller) and her nymphet neighbour Sheila (Bridget Brno), both restless and at loose ends after their respective husbands have left them. Drifting to the city, they're spotted by a talent-seeking madam who sets them up as prostitutes, assuring them they'll have as much adventure as they desire. Sheila immediately hooks up with an elderly billionaire, but Barbi (newly self-christened as "Viva") instead opts for a series of sexual misadventures that take her from a free love chanting nudist guru (Paolo Davanza) to a stage director (John Klemantaski) to a model (Robbin Ryan) and a hipster artist (Marcus DeAnda). Despite these erotic encounters, Viva resists total immersion in the milieu, attempting to stand apart from more willing participants in the sexual free-for-all going on around her. As with the films Viva is based on, there's much less sex here than titillation, but Biller doesn't stint on the nudity, nor does she shy away from unveiling her own attributes when needed. Another obvious antecedent is the look of Playboy magazine - the publication is both referenced and seen in the film - and especially the Harvey Kurtzman/Will Elder strip Little Annie Fanny, which follows a busty naif not unlike Viva, and her constant battle with the lascivious attention of men around her. Knowing winks at the clumsy rhetoric of the times are well played, as are the musical sequences - "Love is good for the birds, it's good for the trees," warbles one nude hippie troubadour, an earnest smile on his face. "It's good for you and me." An orgy heaves into pulsing psychedelic orgasm, busting out into an over-the-top depiction of clichés both sexual and racial. (Black men pounding on congas!) And for those who lament a long-gone era and a mindset, and who might be too distracted by all that flesh to spot Biller's point, there's a line spoken directly to the camera by one of Viva's suitors, a weasel of a man who later violently forces himself on our heroine. "There's never been a better time to be a man," he says. "The sense of entitlement! Enjoy this time, for it will soon be gone, never to return." --Tom Murray
XTRA Director and star Anna Biller does everything - and everyone - in her sex-filled tour de force VIVA You will never see a labour of love quite like Anna Biller's Viva. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker directed, coproduced, wrote, edited, starred in, designed sets and costumes for and scored her first feature about an average secretary-cum-housewife name Barbi Smith caught up in the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Biller has managed to recreate 1972 Los Angeles to jaw-dropping perfection, evoking sexploitation directors such as Radley Metzger and Russ Meyer. Viva is a scathing satire of the more illusory aspects of female empowerment overshadowed by male narcissism, hedonism and excess. That her critique of past mores is couched in the most fluttery feathered hair, the tightest bell bottoms and the most garish textiles and furnishings - did someone say macramé - makes the whole film a smart, retro pleasure from a start to finish. As the film begins, Barbi knows her place. She spends her days being groped by sleazy boss Mr. Humphrey and her evenings cooking, cleaning and, most importantly, fixing drinks for her successful, blond husband Rick, who looks fresh off a soap opera. Weekends are spent by the pool in carefully choreographed rituals of leisure, naturally with a constant stream of alcohol (one of Biller's theses is that everyone was drunk all of the time) and meticulously arranged hors d'oeuvres. They spend their time with fun-loving girl-next-door Sheila and her goofy, horndog, failing actor husband Mark, who laughs heartily at his own lame jokes. After comparing herself to the girls in Playboy, Barbi decides to secretly pursue a modeling career, and when both women find themselves free after their husbands abandon them, they are soon up to their necks in the "adventures" they yearn for. Barbi christens her liberated new self Viva ("which in Italy means 'to live'"). Barbi ends up in bed with a ridiculously swish hairdresser and his uptight bisexual neighbor (who seduces her in a bizarre sugar-licking scene that is difficult to shake). She stumbles into life as a call-girl at a "singles agency" with such clients as a supposedly sensitive and easygoing hippie named Elmer (who ends up guilting her into having sex) and dating both a black lesbian named Agnes and a tempestuous, pretentious artist named Clyde determined to conquer at all costs (including drugging her at a costume ball orgy where she is the reigning goddess). Barbi stumbles through her increasingly traumatic travails as best a suburban naif can with Biller providing her character with the perfect blank look and a permanent pout. But the swinging is never as fun as it is supposed to be. The film is very funny. The obsessive historical reenactment is so relentless, so dead-on and deadpan that its effect is more hypnotic than hilarious. The acting is intentionally wooden, the innuendo intentionally dull-witted, the pace intentionally logy, the situations intentionally far-fetched. Even the most rollicking nude hippie sing-along has a static quality about it, a if it were a natural history museum diorama or a conceptual art piece. Everything is very glazed in a way. That just makes you empathize with Viva more; she's trapped in this perfectly but oppressively designed and decorated world where she has no real agency. The politics Biller resurrects, if not the aesthetics of the period, uncannily resemble our own, where sexual liberation still too often comes with the strings of men's profit and pleasure attached. --Jon Davies
THE GLOBE AND MAIL Anna Biller takes a woman's look at a distinctly male genre A topless beauty in the bathtub flips through 1970s nudie mags with an inquisitive gleam in her eye. Later, she changes in front of her friend's husband. Uh-oh, she's all exposed as she cops a shrinking violet pose straight out of Playboy. This is what Los Angles artist/ filmmaker Anna Biller's ironic take on the sexual revolution looks like. Her new feature Viva seems destined for instant cult status, particularly in the gay film community, where it has been establishing a following. Camp is layered upon camp as Biller, in the lead role of the oh-so-innocent housewife Viva, discovers lust and gay/straight sauciness around every corner of the shag-carpeted seventies. In developing the project, Biller immersed herself in old Playboy magazines and sexploitation films, but she wanted to embed a lesson in the lechery - reversing the power relationship. The male characters in Viva emulate the ugly stereotype of lascivious guys out to get some flesh between cocktails and gold tee-off times. But the female characters are into exploring their sexuality on their own terms and comparing themselves with each other. "My underlying agenda with all of this - even though it's told through film style, film fantasies and film references - is really to talk about female sexuality and desire," Biller says, "to see if you can make a sexploitation film that's actually for women." And for all the peek-a-boo knit tops and flashes of nudity, the film isn't about titillation at all. The dialogue is intentionally as stilted as seventies ad copy and as dated as the Brady-Bunch-on-valium décor. (Biller made most of the sets and costumes herself). The pacing is also undramatically slow and measured. The result: a film entirely about sex that feels astonishingly sexless. Then again, Biller emphasized that this is not a film catering to straight men, but a performance piece for women. Hence the reason for starring in it herself. "I wouldn't ask another actress to take off her clothes in the movie and do all these things with the power trip being "I'm the director, you're the actress," She says. "That would be the same thing as if I was a male director. If I'm doing it to myself, then I can see what it feels like and be on both sides [of the camera]. "It's like looking in the mirror, and I think that's why a lot of women identify with it." --Guy Dixon
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR Viva is an exquisitely designed, lush, 35mm epic mash note to classic 70s exploitation (written, directed, starring, edited, production designed, even animated!) by a one-woman powerhouse named Anna Biller. Ostensibly about a bored sheltered housewife named Barbi (played by Biller with perpetual cocked eyebrow and pouted lips) who transforms into "Viva" upon plunging headfirst into the sexual revolution, the film is equal parts homage and critique as Biller both honors that period through meticulous detail and comments on it with 20/20 hindsight. But first the production itself - which is a dazzling feast for the eyes with every shade of every color of the rainbow seeming to pop up somewhere. From vintage "Playboy" magazines to chartreuse shag rugs, from checked polyester suits with open shirts to lion's head medallions, from cologne and cocktails to green Jell-o, "Viva" is nothing less than a treasure chest of nostalgia! And adrift among the hyper-real wreck is Biller's Barbi who, after her husband Rick leaves her at precisely the same moment her best friend Sheila splits up from her hubby Mark, embarks on an odyssey à la Terry Southern's camp icon Candy (only with a female empowerment touch, as Barbi desperately attempts to explore her sexuality on her own terms). In other words, Barbi-turned-Viva serves as an unwitting magnet to all the sexual energy of the 70s - and both profits from it and suffers as a result. ("There's nothing I like more than being wet," Barbi innocently announces early on as she takes a dip in would-be-swingers Sheila and Mark's pool.) But beneath all the hippies and hair, makeup and music lies a film bubbling with ridiculous humor and serious heart. After Barbi and Sheila (played by comic vixen Bridget Brno) dress up seductively, they take a trip to an adventurous part of town. As Barbi wonders what to do next the ever-resourceful Sheila points the way. "Let's stand over there," Sheila chirps, so they walk to a corner and wait. Of course only mere seconds elapse before a sweet older woman approaches and asks who they work for. When they tell her they're recently unattached housewives she offers them a way to meet the men of their dreams - and even make money in the process! Cut to a scene of Barbi and Sheila in a red velvet parlor, dressed to the nines in melodramatic bordello outfits straight out of a western. In a rare moment of comprehension Barbi suddenly assesses the situation. "It means we're going to be prostitutes," she says wide-eyed. Sighing, Sheila adds, "I always wanted to be a prostitute." After deciding to become belles du jour for the sake of excitement (Barbi chooses "Viva" as her hooker name because it means, "To live!") the two make their separate ways through the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll (or, rather, musical theater. At an audition for an all-nude musical revue the director yells, "Now the pollution number!") At the "Health Valley Nudist Retreat" (where nudists gather to sing and water plants) Viva meets the hirsute and horny Elmer. When that doesn't work out she models for the intensely bohemian artist Clyde but refuses to sleep with him. Fed up he finally goes to the kindly madam for advice. "Have you tried drugs?" she offers. In short, Viva is as addictively campy as the film's centerpiece costume ball/orgy is outrageous, with African drummers mixing with naked nymphos blending with Mae West wannabes (or rather, one Mae West wannabe - a cameo by Biller's very own mom). After a sleazebag tells Viva that she turns him on she wearily retorts, "I turn you on, I turn everybody on." Viva is great camp because it's so over the top - pushes the envelope in all directions - while remaining dryly and wickedly deadpan. With great "bad" acting by a terrific cast, including Chad England as Rick and Jared Sanford as Mark, every line becomes a morsel of fun. At the end when Barbi ("Viva" no longer) and Sheila are done sowing their wild oats and, like their wayward husbands, have grown enough to return to the marriages stronger and wiser, Rick receives a gift from Mark. "What is it?" he asks, lounging by the pool in domestic repose (albeit with a broken leg). In that moment of male bonding Mark earnestly replies, "An antique wooden duck." As the slimy theater producer Arthur puts it, "This is going to be the freshest thing since Liberace." I couldn't agree more. Viva is the ultimate post-millennial midnight movie. --Lauren Wissot
PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER
Everything in excess is Anna Biller's MO. Written, directed and starring the L.A. filmmaker, Viva is a painstakingly accurate depiction of late '60s/early '70s exploitation cinema. (Think Russ, Radley, Doris, Herschell, etc.) Biller plays Barbi, a doll-like, dejected housewife whose inattentive hubby drives her to seek affection elsewhere: at the neighbors' house, in a brothel, at the hairdresser's, in a nudist colony, at an orgy, and any other place that obliges pretty, naked ladies. Viva has all the trappings of a cult classic--plasticine acting, absurd dialogue, fabulous costumes--which is good news for midnight moviegoers. Everything in excess, indeed. --Ashlea Halpern
POLLYSTAFFLE INTERVIEW--"THE NAKED FILMMAKER"
PollyStaffle.com had the chance to talk with Biller via phone for close to two hours and the talented filmmaker opened up about the project. Biller talked nudity, how the film has been misunderstood, sexploitation, exploitation, Russ Meyer, Quentin Tarantino and more...{more}
BALTIMORE CITY PAPER INTERVIEW
Over the past decade, filmmaker Anna Biller has made a series of visually rich and provocative films. Her shorts, including "Three Examples of Myself as Queen" and "A Visit From the Incubus," have garnered both rabid praise and visceral disdain from festival audiences, largely due to her recurrent themes of female pleasure and empowerment. Biller's feature debut, Viva, is already drawing considerable critical praise both for its political wit and visual style, which borrows from brightly colored 1970s sexploitation movies... {more}
BALTIMORE METROMIX INTERVIEW
With "Viva," Anna Biller does it all: Writing, directing, set and costume design and acting. (Yes, she does nude scenes. It'd be difficult to make a film exploring the sexual revolution of the 1970s without them, don't you think?) Speaking with Biller over the phone, she shared her thoughts about checking out Playboy, being a sex goddess and taking it all off. Q: You're very meticulous in your work, coordinating practically everything for your films. What were the major drawbacks of this approach and how long did it actually take to create 'Viva'? A: About four years. The drawback is that it took so long. The good thing is that I had total control of my film, which I think is everybody's ultimate fantasy...{more}
BALTIMORE METROMIX REVIEW
Ultimately, director Anna Biller hopes to upend cultural perceptions of a woman's role in society. However, in order to shatter these stereotypes she must first indulge them. After able (and amply endowed) Barbi Smith (Anna Biller) loses her job thanks to a cheeky boss, she takes her turn at housewifing. Her husband Rick's (Chad England) preoccupation with work leaves Barbi lonely and bored, and a mishap involving an attempt at modeling only widens the gap between Barbi and her husband. Barbi decides it's time to truly live life, and she does so by assuming the persona of a more sensual person. Barbi becomes Viva. From the outset, "Viva" is a beautifully stylized film, embracing the '70s sexploitation aesthetic in all its polyester glory. Though the soundtrack's porn-style jams imply ensuing hard-core action, "Viva" stops shy of such degrading on-screen behavior, and relies instead on lots and lots of nudity and an endless barrage of sexual imagery to document Viva's sexual awakening. Viva's exploration lands her in multiple positions (pun very much intended), presenting herself and her companion in this sex-fueled picaresque as lovers, sinners, swingers, victims, friends and mothers. For Anna Biller, whose work on the film included writing, directing, costume designing and starring, the topic seems a natural fit. For all its campy one-liners and plot turns, "Viva" remains true to Barbi's discoveries. Sure, "Viva" provides wonderful eye candy, but it isn't just an indie skin flick. It's an indie skin flick with a moral. --Mark Gross
MONTREAL MIRROR
Wow, this is a weird one. But hey, this is Fantasia, after all. Anna Biller writes, directs and stars in this entirely unusual and somehow endearing film about a housewife in L.A., 1972, riding the wave of sexual liberation yet somehow still remarkably unsatisfied. Biller has clearly seen the Radley Metzger collection, soaking herself in the aesthetic of a cheeseball early '70s soft-porn film. It's a strange exercise in camp: Biller plays Viva as she searches for her new identity in a brave and crazy new sexual world. But is it a better one? Set and costume designers will swoon over the deeply affected art direction. I got off just as much on the plastic performances of the universally-superb cast. --Matthew Hays
BANG-BANG
For her first feature-length film, Anna Biller, director-writer-producer-set designer-costume-designer-actress, has achieved an unexpected feat: she has transformed a sexploitation film into an art film! Inspired by this genre from the films from the late 1960s, this female John Waters created, during four years, a universe stylized in its smallest details: bright colors, flamboyant costumes, and elaborate decorations for the the eyes, and voices dubbed in the studio which subtly shift the dialogue towards the artificial for the ears. Moreover, the latter contains such pearls of the genre as: "There's nothing I like more than getting wet", spoken at the moment of entering the swimming pool, the whole thing accompanied by background music with a slapped bass. Behind all this stylized work, there is also (ah yes!) a story. Thus, we follow a young woman who is bored. After having separated from her husband, she is plunged into the whirlpool of the sexual revolution circa 1972. With this story the director makes a point about interpersonal relations, recalling that, in the name of liberation, women ended up doing everything that men dictated to them as regards sexuality. Thus on a second level, that would make this film a feminist softporn...! But we can guarantee that it will largely entertain the many curious men which it promises to attract.--Monsieur Pilon
MARYLAND FILM FESTIVAL
Biller triumphantly captures the look and feel of a campy, late-60s/early-70s sexploitation movie, right down to all the good details (nudity, social adventures, make up, costumes, set) and not-necessarily-good details (awkward pacing, wooden acting, hysterically unnatural dialogue, and pre-PC stereotypes) -- all skillfully manipulated here to uproarious effect. It's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls meets just about any Radley Metzger film -- and every bit as trippy as you'd imagine. Viva unfolds like an old issue of Playboy come to life -- and not just the nude photography, but also the articles, food and fashion spreads, and even the ads. It's also a stunning calling card for Biller, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in Viva while she wasn't designing the sets and costumes -- and who generated animated sequences and incidental music for good measure. --Skizz Cyzyk
PHILADELPHIA FILM FESTIVAL
Anna Biller does it all in this outrageous, pitch-perfect homage to sexploitation films of the '70s about a housewife on a journey of sexual self-discovery. Sure to be a future cult classic, the sheer audacity of Viva is something to behold. Anna Biller has single-handedly and lovingly-- created a campy sexploitation pic worthy of Russ Meyer, Radley Metzger and Hershell Gordon Lewis. Biller not only stars in the film, but collected all the set pieces and costumes and wrote and directed as well. The result is a swirling, boozy, large-breasted, semi-clad sexual odyssey that is vividly colorful, outrageously over-the-top and just a lot of breezy good fun. Biller stars as Barbi, a buxom housewife, who yearns to explore her sexuality. In the midst of the sexual revolution and with an adventurous friend along, she sets off in search of herself. Taking on the pseudonym "Viva" for her exploits, her journey lands her in a world of prostitution, nudist colonies, drugs, lesbianism and bohemian orgies. Viva's breathtaking color palate highlights Biller's set design of flamboyant 1970s "chic." Every detail is meticulously crafted, from the hilariously stilted performances right down to the copies of books like "Gynomite" sitting on shelves in this hilarious and nostalgic look at the innocent days when sex was still something "dangerous." --Eric Moore
FROM THE BALCONY
"Viva." The audience did not know what to expect and we were all shocked by the outrageous full-frontal nudity. (Just goes to show how sophisticated we are here in Las Vegas!) Taking place during the sexual revolution of the 1970's, a bored housewife decides to explore her sexuality - all done in lavish color, high camp songs, wild wigs and costumes, and a Russ Meyer-style sexploitation appreciation for full-figured women. And remember, the 70's was before boob jobs and bikini waxing. Anna Biller, "Viva's" writer, director and star is divine! She is completely entrancing and a sensational new female character ready for her Hollywood close-up. We need Biller to change the view that actresses must be 19 years old and 95 lbs. Does Nicole Kidman look like anyone from The Planet Earth? Abandoned by her husband, Barbi (Anna Biller) is encouraged by a girlfriend (Bridget Brno) to explore her sexuality. With a fresh naiveté and a what-the-hell curiosity, Barbi becomes "Viva" and enters the world of casual hooking, nudism, the hippie scene, an outrageous orgy, bisexuality, sadism, drugs, and bohemia - and doing all of it topless! Biller captures the corny sexploitation genre with an uncanny eye. Biller is also an accomplished director. As a true woman's director, she gives herself and her female co-star sensual close-ups. The men do not fare so well. Biller and all of her cast were on hand for the screening and Q&A afterwards. One question asked that was on everyone's mind: "How many of the players are in the adult film industry?" Biller answered, "None."
PERTH FILM FESTIVAL
The new "sex cult comedy" is here! Just when you thought the art of the cult movie was dead, along comes Viva to give it the kiss of life - with lips covered in sticky pink lip-gloss and blue eye shadow to match!! Responsible for this resurrection is writer-director-star Anna Biller. Fearlessly she has reworked the 70s sexploitation comedy into something we can laugh at in delight, recoil from in shock and marvel at with 30 years hindsight. Its lurid production design is torn from the pages of 70s furniture catalogues, its sexual politics from the pages of 70s Playboy. Biller plays housewife Viva. Permanently clad in sheer negligées, Viva yearns for a life beyond looking after her man Rick (Chad England) and sitting around the pool reading 'sophisticated' magazines. She and best friend Sheila (Bridget Brno) decide the only path to true sexual revolution is to 'become prostitutes'. Orgies, singing hippy communes and swingers parties ensue, with plenty of gratuitous nudity!! Recalling the work of Doris Wishman, John Waters and Russ Meyer, Biller's film is hilarious - an instant a hit on the international festival circuit. So wrong, yet so right, Viva is a minor masterpiece destined for cult movie history. --Megan Spencer DAILY TIGER INTERVIEW
Anna Biller's marvelous debut film VIVA is a highly stylized pastiche of advertisements and sexploitation films from the sixties and seventies. Biller was not only responsible for the directing, but for practically everything, including vacuuming the sets... (more)--Kees Driessen
DAILY TIGER PREVIEW
Pour yourself a Pink Pussycat, put on your go-go boots and plunge into vibrant Planet Viva!
In VIVA (USA, 2007), a delightful retro-styled sex comedy inspired by Seventies-era Playboy magazines and advertisements, filmmaker Anna Biller appropriates the sexploitation genre for her own means, using it to tell the humorous story of a woman's journey through the jungle of the sexual revolution... (more)
GLAMCULT INTERVIEW
No, the IFFR does not program porno, as the Viva promo-poster may lead you to believe. In Viva, a film by director ANNA BILLER that takes place in the 1970's, the dissatisfied housewife Barbi is seduced into prostitution, with all of its consequences. Biller, who was inspired for the film by vintage Playboys and sexploitation films from the 1970's, has produced a particularly colorful film... (more)--Hanka Van Der Voet
EPRESSO
The film opening the professional programme on Friday was a real wake-up call. The work entitled "Viva" (dir.: Anna Biller, 2006) is a light, farcical and naive retrofilm. The taboo-breaking sexual revolution of the late 60's gave rise to many genres, one of them the sexploitation flick aimed at the explicit portrayal of sexuality around a flimsy plot. This picture, a tribute to this genre at its best, is about two bored housewives in their twenties who are neglected by their husbands. Having nothing better to do, Barbi and Sheila set off to abandon their utterly boring homes and explore their sexuality through a series of adventures. The film draws on the classic devices characteristic of this genre: wooden, manneristic acting, colors, fabrics, clothes and hairstyles typical of the period, phallic symbols, the figure of the innocent fallen woman, lesbian love-goddesses, gay hairdressers, nudist hippies, suave fashion photographers, a sex-craving director of a nudist glitzy musical, and so on and so forth. There is soft-porn music throughout the movie, and many direct sexploitation references, such as the portrayal of female orgasm which references the classic film entitled "Behind the Green Door" (dir.: Jim Mitchell, 1972). Another peculiarity of the film is that its protagonist is the director and producer as well. We strongly recommend her film to those new to this genre, as a preparation for the exploitation homage "Grindhouse" (dir.: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez) to be released later this year, or to anyone who is amused by 70's exploitation movies. --Major Zoltán THE NEW YORKER
Anna Biller, a filmmaker and old-Hollywood fetishist...show[ed] me a scene from a film she'd just finished, called "Viva," about a bored housewife, circa 1972. (Biller was the writer, director, editor, and lead actress.) She had an old editing machine in the garage, so we crowded in and she cued up a sequence in which her character strips naked and takes a bath, while paging through a hard-core skin magazine. When the scene ended, [Robert] Greene said, This is where everything starts to turn a little tawdry." I wasn't sure what to think... --Nick Paumgarten
VC FILMFEST
VIVA is also not lacking for explicit sex and decadence, but unlike another nominally hedonistic film of recent vintage (SHORTBUS by John Cameron Mitchell), VIVA is feminist filmmaking that knows its strengths and limitations, and works within those parameters to turn the whole paradigm of feminist liberation upside down. (more)--Abe Ferrer
FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL ("Reeling in Rotterdam")
American filmmaker Anna Biller provided some levity to the horror-heavy sidebar with Viva, a revival of the soft-core films of the 1960s. Biller, who dons multiple hats on the movie, stars as a bored Southern California housewife who searches for sexual liberation by becoming a prostitute. Full of campy performances and giggle-inducing period costumes, the film may be destined for cult status. --Daniel Steinhart
RAZOR REEL
Did you ever think about what you would get if you would mix the eroticism of Joe Sarno, the campiness of Doris Wishman and the psychedelica of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, maybe even adding a dash of stylish advertisements of the seventies? Well Anna Biller did so for her first full-length feature called "Viva," and she manage to blend many more influences then even I can think of. Whatever you might think of it, the result is bigger then the sum of all. "Viva" is a top-notch campy movie, mixing stylish art (and drug related) elements of the seventies with the bohemian lifestyle of the swinging sixties. When watching the sets and the colors used on these sets, I get vivid childhood memories of the interiors at my grandparents' house. However, Anna Biller's vision of the seventies is a bit more exaggerated than I remember. Especially the costumes seem to be over the top. Yet this is a good thing, as it makes "Viva" more camp then it already is, although it never descends into silliness. The film is about the sexual revolution and women's liberation. It is also a pastiche of original sexploitation films, musicals and sixties psychedelica. The acting is done as if the movie was made in the seventies. Characters in the film are stereotypes: a gay hairdresser and his bisexual friend, the bored and naive housewives, the rich and spoiled artist, the wannabe director, the lesbian girlfriend and many more. Smoking and drinking is permitted, and maybe for this reason alone this film is liberating. Barbi (Anna Biller) and Sheila (Bridget Brno) are two bored housewives who indulge themselves in the adventurous life of swinging and bohemian conduct. Barbi, who takes on the name Viva, gets the best out of it by visiting a nudist resort, dating an artist, taking drugs, going to an orgy and experimenting with lesbian love. The music alone makes the movie worthwhile. I truly wonder if it is available on CD (or vinyl if you want to stay in touch with the time frame). Mixing jazzy scores, soul and beatnik tunes with musical kitsch and seventies erotica background music, this soundtrack is indeed the best choice one can think to go along with the vivid colours, the campy dialogues and the stereotypes of the characters. Re-using music from movies like "Camille 2000,"Il Medico della Mutua", " C'era una Volta" and "Fanny Hill," Anna Biller clearly shows where her influences come from and who she admires. "Viva" is an ode to the seventies, not as it was, but definitely as you wished it was. It's an extravaganza of eroticism, with bright colours and costumes that put the biggest smile on your face. Although the story itself isn’t one of constant cheer and happiness, the movie is a joyful experience that is a perfect addition to an art form that is almost gone. --Patrick van Hauwaert FILM THREAT INTERVIEW ANNA BILLER: LIFE OF A STAR by Eric Campos
Anna Biller creates worlds dripping with style that pull their viewers into a Technicolor dreamland that serve as a feast for the eyes . Focusing on personal and feminist issues set against old Hollywood, theatrical-burlesque, and mythical-allegorical backdrops, this isn't your typical feminist fare and for that, Anna has received mixed reactions... more
BIJOUFLIX INTERVIEW by Dave Coleman
If you've ever wondered when the next John Waters or Pedro Almodovar will appear to claim the crown as new cult queen, you may have already missed the underground coronation of Ms. Anna Biller in this role. While everyone was expecting the next cult fave to be male-created as usual, flickmaker Anna Biller quietly stepped into the throne room and was graciously awarded the title... more
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