Viva
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Directed by Paddy Breathnach
Apr 27, 2016
Web Exclusive
To what degree the people in Jesus’s life really care about him is questionable. Cecilia, who is described by someone as “fiery,” asks to borrow money from him and never pays him back, constantly asks to use his apartment to have sex with her boyfriend, but her interest in his life is minimal. One of his older clients is continually “short” for paying for his hairdressing services. They epitomize the fair weather friend, and it’s clear why Jesus, in his lithe frailty, would want to exert some sort of control over his life. The only person who seems to have a genuine vested interest in him is Mama, the drag mother at a local Havana drag club. When he expresses interest in wanting to perform drag, partially for the extra money, she allows him to, and tells him honestly that his first performance as Viva was shit.
But the reemergence of his previously absent father, a washed up boxer in his life only serves as greater motivation for Jesus. For him, drag is no longer just a performance of desire and exploring persona, but a defiance of his father’s imposition of conventional masculinity upon him. For Jesus, drag transcends performance art and becomes an act of anarchy.
Irish director Paddy Breathnach creates a dichotomy between drag and boxing not unlike Darren Aronofsky’s between wrestling and ballet (in The Wrestler and Black Swan, respectively), but, also like Aronofsky, does so in order to draw comparisons between the two particularly with regard to its performative aspects. While boxing doesn’t carry the same homoeroticisms, there’s something to be said about how Jesus and his father define and perform their masculinity.
Notable is the pouty, reticent look on Hector Medina’s face. He is malleable to others’ will, and thus, drag is, in his way, a rebellion. The crucial issue is that, however good Medina is as Jesus, it still feels as if Jesus is taking baby steps as Viva. There’s very little impression that Viva has grown as a drag queen, as that timid nature and reticence, or even more bluntly, that lack of real stage presence, defines the performance. And the film walks a line of convention, becoming a tale of two very different men rekindling their relationship. It’s presented in an interesting enough way so that we see Jesus “sacrifice himself” for the sake of his new relationship with his father (even if it’s at the expense of connoting sex work as negative), but its end goal as a piece of sentimentality is kind of bland. That being said, Viva’s final performance as act of defiance is one that brings down the house.
Author rating: 6.5/10
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