Directed by Paddy Breathnach
Cuba/Ireland | Spanish w/ English subtitles | Fiction | 2015 | 100 min
Film Source: Magnolia
Showtime: Friday, October 28 | 9:00pm | FH
Awards: Ireland’s official submission to the 2015 Academy Awards
This finely wrought drama of a young, aspiring drag performer in Havana contending with his newly released convict father and struggling both to make ends meet and make it onstage at a local club, features fantastic performances, sensuous, striking cinematography and an all-encompassing sense of place. A classic story of buried resentments, bruised identities and time lost, Viva captures the roiling tensions and aspirations of transforming cultures in the microcosm of a father and son’s relationship. Aesthetically rich and emotionally urgent, Irish director Paddy Breathnach’s film explores the painstaking but illuminative process of discovering truth through artifice. In the act of performance, in the guise of a lie, honesty can be found, and genuine sentiment revealed. How that truth is received is the question that remains. ~SJ