Viva (2007)

The women in my life have better taste than me. Anna Biller is exhibit A.

I got Viva handed to me by my girlfriends (like, my friends that are girls). Biller wrote, directed, edited, scored, sewed the costumes, and plays the lead herself, which is how you know you’re about to spend two hours inside someone’s specific obsessions. Those obsessions turn out to be: the 1970s sexploitation film as a form, what it promised women, and what it actually delivered. Spoiler on the second one.

Her films took me time. Viva moves the way its source material moved, slowly, circularly, sometimes repetitively, because the budgets back then didn’t leave much room for urgency. Scenes meander. Barbi, Biller’s suburban housewife protagonist, drifts through nudist camps and bohemian apartments and men who think they’ve invented freedom. The critique is there underneath it all, but it takes patience.

The Love Witch (2016) is where Biller gets all of this exactly right. If that’s where you started, Viva is the rougher version of the same argument. It is. But a woman directed this in 2007, inside a form built almost entirely by and for men, and that’s something. I’m glad the women in my life made sure I noticed.

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