Aviva
A musical drama comes out of nowhere to shake up its audience.
Certain films are by their very nature of specialist appeal. They indubitably include films that are highly avant-garde and experimental and from time to time one finds examples in works that are centred on dance in an unusually adventurous form. Boaz Yakin's Aviva qualifies for that category under both headings. The result is a strongly original piece but it's also an uneven one in spite of making its mark in some very distinctive ways.
First let me indicate those areas in which the film is at its best. Yakin, being the writer as well as the director, has chosen a storyline that sounds quite conventional: it's the tale of how Aviva (Zina Zinchenko) living in Paris starts an online friendship with a New Yorker named Eden (Tyler Phillips) and then finds herself so drawn to this man despite not having actually met him that she travels to America to see him. Aviva explores their relationship and thus becomes a love story but one which shows the ups and downs, the tensions and the conflicts, their marriage and its disintegration. What gives the narrative a special style is the fact that a great deal of it is expressed in dance form using music that extends to songs composed for the film. Although much dialogue is included too, all of the main players are first and foremost dancers associated with an Israeli dance company, but the major achievement of Aviva as a dance work is that the choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber is clearly designed for filming so that the editing by Holle Singer suits it perfectly.
A less obviously specialised element in Aviva's appeal stems from the fact that Yakin has created a film that is strongly sexual. In today's cinema that may be thought nothing out of the ordinary, but sex scenes can often feel cheaply exploitative whereas here there is a sense that sex and sexuality are being celebrated regardless of those aspects of the story that are downbeat. Startlingly, most of the main characters are introduced in nude shots but, while this is a novel gesture, it is done in a manner that contributes to the sense of the work being totally at ease with sex and that differentiates this film from others that contain explicit imagery.
This attitude is itself a reflection of a modern outlook since it is connected to total acceptance of gay and lesbian sexual expression and to a belief in gender fluidity within individuals. Consequently, Aviva is shown to possess a male side and Eden has a female one. Since the dance element renders this a stylised work, Yakin can build on this concept by taking a further giant step. Thus it is that Aviva is also played by a man (Schraiber) and Eden by a woman (Smith). Recently we had in Mouthpiece (2018) a film in which two actresses represented the two sides of the central female character but, if that worked clearly enough, to have two characters doubled in this way and to have each one played by both a male and a female actor is to ask for confusion. To be fair we are given due warning at the outset: in a film in which people on screen sometimes address the audience directly, we first see Bobbi Jene Smith as herself (but in a nude scene) informing us that she is acting in the film that we are about to see but that she will be playing a man. What follows allows for reflections on gender as well as on sexuality but its stylisation can make it difficult at times to grasp just what is going on and even who is who. For example, we find ourselves having to adjust to seeing man whom we need to recognise as being not a man as such but as Aviva's masculine side and this can even extend to seeing this person having sex with Eden in what looks like a gay encounter but isn't.
The approach may have its fascination but it takes us so far from naturalism that it is difficult to care about the characters and their fate. Furthermore, by pursuing these set-ups to the extent that it does, Aviva threatens to become pretentious in a mode not so far removed from another April release, Black Bear. The players may be more at home as dancers than as actors but, while they never hold back, it is Boaz Yakin whose contribution is central: he is responsible for those aspects of Aviva that are problematical, including its near two hour running time which leads to diminishing returns, but equally he can take most of the credit for the elements that do work and which make this film unique.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Zina Zinchenko, Bobbi Jene Smith, Tyler Phillips, Or Schraiber, Omri Drumlevich, Mouna Soualem, Isaias Santamaria, Yiannis Logothetis, Roman Malenda, Lorenzo Jackson, Annie Rigney.
Dir Boaz Yakin, Pro Boaz Yakin, Bobbi Jene Smith and Carlos Zozaya, Screenplay Boaz Yakin, Ph Arseni Khachaturan, Pro Des Estee Braverman, Ed Holle Singer, Music Ryan 'Bullet' Shields and Asaf Avidan, Costumes Stacy Jansen.
Best Friend in the World/Amicalement-votre/Raise Up Films-Matchbox Films.
116 mins. USA/France. 2020. Rel: 30 April 2021. Available on VOD including Curzon Home Cinema and BFI Player. No Cert.
