For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - Viva Riva!
The Impression:
This is
the first movie made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
since the 1970s. Where one might think a director from the
D.R.C. would make a movie about the terrible nature of these
last war-torn twenty years, Viva Riva! is a sweaty,
passion-fueled crime story. I love a good passion-fueled
crime story, especially when they’re set in strange exotic
places I’ve never laid eyes upon.
The Reality:
If Djo Munga had purchased a Super-8 camera and walked the
streets of Kinshasa filming this unseen world, I would’ve
paid ten dollars for it. Instead he cooks up a delightfully
brutal bit of Africa Noir. The titular Riva, he of the Viva,
is, for all purposes, a hustler. Long before the events of
the film he’s disappeared from his hometown, and the capital
of the DRC, Kinshasa, and now he returns with a twinkle in
his eye and gallons upon gallons upon gallons of seemingly
pilfered gas. As Kinshasa is in the middle of a massive gas
crisis and fit-to-burst with unguzzling vehicles, Riva is in
a pretty good place. Until, with booze on his breath and
fire in his belly, he seduces the wife of a notorious
gangster, and, well, we know how that goes. Munga has, in
effect, followed the lines of the classic crime film to a
tee - the femme fatale, the blustering anti-hero, the
swaggering villain - but in transplanting it to the sultry
nights of the DRC, he’s made a film that pops. Kinshasa
shakes with an uncontrollable wildness and the exploits of
Riva and crew seem always just inches away from gunfire and
violence. Sex rests casually on the hips of every man and
woman, and Munga has no restraint in showering the viewer
with graphic sexuality. And though the film is brutal, the
intensity of its violence makes the screen feel as if it
itself is sweating with paranoia and anticipation and we the
audience can only grip the edge of our seat and hope that
everything turns out all right.
The Lesson:
The crime genre is a beautiful thing. So many locales, so
many ways to rob someone.
- Noah Sanders
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