There is no greater pleasure for this critic than discovering a new film that's a sure shot to make my year-end Best Queer films list. That film is the Irish-produced Viva, opening Friday. Set in old Havana, the film's hero is the boyishly enticing Hector Medina, making his feature debut as Jesus, a skinny teen who dreams of becoming a larger-than-life drag diva. Jesus does hair and wigs for his hood's grand dames, real biological old women with lots of attitude and little tolerance for the slippery ways of their grandkids.
In a beautifully constructed sequence, Jesus is doing an old women's hair when her scheming granddaughter hits him up for the keys to his pad. Boy and girl unload on each other in a burst of character-defining dialogue.
"You going out?"
"Why?"
"I need the apartment."
"For who?"
"Javier."
"Javier, the boxer?"
"He's got prospects. His fists are going to take me to Miami. You'll see."
"Take him to your place."
"Half of Havana lives there. Anyway, you're practically family. Jesus, I need to get fucked today. And in a bed for a change."
The next scene finds Jesus walking the streets of Old Havana, window-shopping. The narrow streets are full of 50s-era American cars, the shops full of goods too pricey for a youngster who makes his dough from old dames who are always pleading poverty.
The real center of Jesus' life is the nightclub where his drag mentor Mama (Luis Alberto Garcia) urges the boy to go for his dream to star in the club's shows. But just when Jesus' drag career appears ready for liftoff, an old devil from his past, his father Angel (Jorge Perugorria), just out of prison, shows up. A homophobic macho, Angel forbids Jesus to perform at the club, sponges off the kid, and threatens to occupy the boy's apartment for a long stint.
In the film's least convincing moments, Angel takes Jesus around to his old stomping grounds, an outdoor boxing gym pitifully short of equipment. In this uncomfortable sequence the boy learns how his dad fell from grace in the world of fisticuffs, establishing their odd father/son bond. Viva is aimed at the heart more than for the head, a story for anyone who's had a weird parental bond. It may remind some Billy Wilder fans of how his insurance-clerk hero C.C. Baxter in The Apartment shimmies up the executive ladder by lending out his bedroom to randy executives. Others may recall indie director Tom McCarthy's Win-Win, where a high school wrestling coach nearly torpedoes his life by intervening in a broken family situation.
Viva is Ireland's Foreign Language Oscar submission (director Paddy Breathnach, screenwriter Mark O'Halloran) while the film boosts the stock of its Cuban-born cast, fetching 27-year-old lead Medina alongside Cuban acting vets Perugorria, Garcia and Renata Maikel Machin Blanco. As one aging drag performer opines halfway through Viva 's 100 minutes of frenzied anxiety, "Why is everyone on this island addicted to drama?"