At the heart of “Aviva” is a familiar love story between a man and a woman, with a familiar arc of romance, breakup and reconciliation. Yet in its first frames, the movie, written and directed by Boaz Yakin, announces several ways that the telling will be unusual. A naked woman looks at the camera and informs us that the character she plays is a man.
That’s not all. The woman, Bobbi Jene Smith, also tells us that she is a dancer and choreographer, which is true in real life. She tells us that she is acting and that the creative team — she introduces the camera operators — decided that because this fictional film includes much dance, it was better to ask dancers to pull off the acting instead of the reverse.
Already, the film has established what’s fresh about it: its questioning of gender, its use of dance not as an entertaining interlude but as a primary mode of expression. Already, it has established a self-conscious tone that undermines its formal boldness and wit.
The main characters, Aviva and Eden, are each played by two actors, one male and one female, representing the dual aspect of each self. Sometimes, they swap in and out; sometimes, three or four of them share a scene — bickering, taking sides, having sex.
This device allows for novel angles on love, marriage, jealousy and friendship. It suggests a universal multiplicity of gender. At its best, it results in surrealist comedy, playing on the psychoanalytic idea that whenever two people go to bed together, many others are in the bed with them.
Choreography by Smith (with contributions from her husband, Or Schraiber, who plays Aviva’s male side) enlivens the movie in a mode indebted to the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, in whose Batsheva Dance Company Smith and Schraiber spent many years. The dancing is gutsy, sensual, uninhibited and a little too full of itself. Pride in frank eccentricity pushes at times into the unintentionally absurd. Still, it’s exciting how these dance sequences are treated like any other scene, and disappointing when the compulsion to justify them takes hold.
Those strengths and faults apply to the film in general. Yakin, best known for the unsubtle, conventional “Remember the Titans” (2000), has given himself a free hand to experiment. But that hand remains heavy, as when a flashback to gender confusion in Eden’s childhood is underlined as an obvious “Rosebud” moment. The surprising choices grow less surprising. A daring film becomes less daring than it might have been.
Aviva
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on virtual cinemas.
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‘Aviva’ Review: Just the Two of Us (and Our Other Selves) - The New York Times
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