Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Boaz Yakin
Starring: Bobbi Jene Smith, Zina Zinchenko, Or Schraiber, Tyler Phillips
Unless they are happening to you then, my god, the break-ups of
relationships are so boring. We’ve all been stuck there at the end of a
phone, attempting to comfort a bereft pal whose partner has given them the
elbow, knowing all the while that there is nothing to say, nothing to be
done. Knowing, in fact, that this is inevitable. That relationships which
work are valuable and exciting precisely because of their absolute rarity.
The committed, enduring and ever-loving relationship just isn’t the
natural way of things: as sure as the blossom drops from the spring time
branch, infatuation withers away.
This is why most romantically themed films feature the lusty and fresh
thrills of new love, and the ones concerning break ups are comparatively
scarce: who wants to watch that sort of thing? (Break up songs, however,
are conversely amazing).
In his avant garde oddity Aviva, industry vet Boaz Yakin (everything from
Dirty Dancing 2 to the screenplay for the Dolph Lundgren
Punisher) recognises this axiom, and filters his breakup drama (middle class,
boho white people - aren’t they all?) through a kinaesthetic, queer AF
kaleidoscope of dance, gender fluidity and loads of shagging. I’m going to
go out on an arm waved limb here and say that you won’t see anything else
quite like it this year.
The opening had me spluttering into my Cosmo. A hall-of-meta voiceover
deconstructs the process of film narrative - identifying the cameras the
film will be using and suchlike - before a sudden smash cut to the owner
of the voice: a woman (the famed choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith)
half sitting, half lying upon a bed, completely in the nude, informing us
that she is "An actress, I’m acting right now."
The fusion of playful artifice and emotional honesty is striking, and the
presentation of the human body, in its imposing, matter of fact beauty, is
lovely and refreshing (not just Smith in this bit, but the subsequent
diverse male and female nudity that runs through Aviva’s running time like a pulsing vein). Smith’s character (persona?) goes
on to explain that she will be playing what is "commonly referred to as a
man," in a narrative where the central characters Eden (Smith/Tyler Phillips) and Aviva (Or Schraiber/Zina Zinchenko) will be
represented with actors playing both their female and male animas.
Plot wise, the couple meet online, hook up, break up, get back together;
the tortuosity of the affiliation conveyed through the conflicting ‘sides’
of each character and the vivid expressionism of dance from the quartet of
actors and the larger ensemble.
The physicality of dance is matched by several sequences of fairly
explicit soft-core activity, wherein the competing animas of either Eden
or Aviva offer advice and support during sex like a coach on the
sidelines. These scenes are a useful and enlightening contribution to the
present discourse concerning gender and sexuality, but, disappointingly,
the sex scenes lack variety, and resort most often to missionary stylings
(even the male on male sequences). You’re left thinking that if you are
going to have your cast in the nip simulating sexual activity, then more
could have been done.
Similarly, the dance sequences are of the arty style, more shoulders and
sway than hips and dips, and occasionally come across like an end of year
dance student project. The Brechtian distancing of the diegesis may
provide an objectivity to the relationship woes of Eden and Aviva, but it
also slightly distances us from the two. While this film should be
championed for its originality and imagination, an emotional core is at
times not present.
Does Aviva work, ultimately? Well, as a character admits in
a mid-point mea culpa, "Fuck consistency over tone. We did it."
Aviva is on UK VOD from April 30th.
