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Set in the 1970s, Barbi is a bored housewife with swingers living next door and a husband Rick (Chad England) who just does not satisfy her sexually. One afternoon around the pool with her neighbours Mark (Jared Sanford) and Sheila (Bridget Brno) drinking whiskey and (weirdly) taking each others tops off to compare figures they fall onto the discussion of sex. Barbi is unsatisfied with Rick and says so, Sheila agrees they should both experiment and ‘live a little’. What follows can only be described as an exotic and erotic adventure into one woman’s sexuality as Barbi becomes minx Viva, shagging her way around town and getting into all kinds of scrapes and hijinks. The concept for this film is far better than the finished product itself, as Biller wanted to re-create a perfect copy of a 70s sexploitation film in every minute detail, and for modern audiences to believe it had either been lost or fallen through a time tunnel and ended up here in cynical 2009. This is an admirable idea and the attention to detail is astounding, from the perfect costumes which Anna often made herself to the great set design with period furniture and props. The colour is also amazing as it looks like it was shot on digital and re-graded in post production but was actually shot on film and lit like that on set to create the look and make things simply bold and bright on screen. Biller went even so far as to edit the film herself over a year, cutting on film and not using computers or avid to try and capture the feel and era of the time so that it might create a more authentic finished product. All this dedication is fantastic in this digital and CGI age but in fact it maybe that Biller was actually too close to her little baby to see what she put out in the end. The story is fine in that Viva wants to explore her sexuality, but she does so in series of really dodgy encounters that could easily be misinterpreted by a sensitive audience. For example, getting molested by her boss and then being fired, and being practically raped on at least two occasions are not scenes that contemporary audiences are accustomed to. Add to that situations where she becomes a prostitute, gets drugged and nearly raped (again) and engages in nudist colony orgies as well as being lusted after by artists, other women and finally her neighbour Mark and we have an extreme sexploitation film! All director Biller wants us to think that all of this is what Viva chooses to do and that she would not be in those dangerous situations without her consent, it’s just that she is naïve and maybe a little bit twisted in her own sexual fantasies. The film will probably come across different to a female audience but as a male viewer I found overall that the film was 30 minutes too long and as I mentioned Russ Meyer earlier its worth note his own films were often under 90 minutes and impeccably edited while Viva is not. But overall this is mad and silly stuff that is stylistically brilliantly realised, for which it receives the bulk of our star rating, but ultimately it is easy to ask the question' what was the point of it all?'
Want more? Read our interview with Anna Biller HERE. Starring: Anna Biller, Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno, Chad England Rating: *** Review by Mark Cappuccio |
For those red blooded men out there who remember and love Russ Meyer’s Vixen films or any other sexploitation film from the 60’s and 70s, then this new film from L.A. writer, director and artist Anna Biller could be right up your alley (so to speak).
