The crowd-pleasing Viva, directed by Irish filmmaker Paddy Breathnach (Blow Dry), is set in the world of Cuban drag queens. The film, opening May 6, features Jesus (Héctor Medina), a Havana hairdresser who works for Mama (Luis Alberto Garcia), a performer at a local gay bar. One night at the club, Jesus unexpectedly reunites with his long-lost father, Angel (Jorge Peruggoría), a former boxer now out of jail and harboring a secret. As father and son try to find a common ground–Angel is not too keen to have a son who is a maricón–Jesus is determined to pursue work as a performer for Mama.
Viva was written by out screenwriter Mark O’Halloran. Breathnach came up with the idea for the film after visiting Cuba in the 1990s. He took Mark to a drag show “in the middle of nowhere on the far side of the island,” he said over the phone from Ireland. “It struck me quickly that the performances had this raw, emotionally authentic bare quality to them that wasn’t in any other drag performance I’d seen. It immediately impressed on me that that was something I wanted to see more of.”
He emphasized that what made the scenario emotionally resonant was that, before the show began, he saw that the woman next to him was crying. He recalled, “I asked her why, and she said it was her brother and this was the only time he was happy.”
The shows were impressive, in part, because as Breathnach said, “It was all clandestine discovery. They were in a run down, working-class Havana suburb—in someone’s back yard, basically. They put out a red sheet and one spotlight and the transformative power of that—a realm of dreams, and the realm of the possible. The intense quality and power of the songs struck me as something very interesting and so rare. To make something transformative out of so little—that was a remarkable thing. It’s the need to do it; it’s more intense. It’s about finding your voice.”
Jesus is trying to find his individual identity, but in the course of that process, he is disempowered at times, such as when he goes along with his father, or resorts to prostituting himself. The filmmaker believes, “He is not subjugated by his shame. He’s bearing terrible things, and doing things that may destroy him, but you still feel his inner goodness is present. It’s through his performance he can find more fundamental, greater, and deeper truth and fulfillment.”
How Jesus finds happiness, and helps other characters do that same, is part of what makes Viva so satisfying. “There’s a selflessness in Jesus,” Breathnach observes. “I suppose one of the great things is that while it can be seen as a weakness, Jesus turns it into his power. He can be true to himself, and enable others to find the truth in themselves. Not only does he make his own transformation, but others find themselves as well. Suddenly he has an opportunity to have a father—and he wants to preserve that–but he does it on his own terms. For Angel, he wants to love his son, but doesn’t know how to do, or express, that. Mama cares for him, and yet Jesus is wary of her help.”
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