Aviva begins with a woman (Bobbi Jene Smith), naked on a bed looking directly at the camera, stating she is an actress and is acting right now, speaking dialogue written by, as she says, “what we as a species commonly refer to as a man.” She’s also a dancer and explains she’s in the film because the dancing required would be more difficult for a non-dancer to pull off. It gets more self-conscious from there.

This is a very Godardian way to start, but Godard is a master. Boaz Yakin, the director, is a very good filmmaker (the mainstream Remember the Titans), but he can’t help a sense of self-importance and condescension to seep in here. For every interesting idea or powerful moment to come, there are 20 head-scratchers.

Aviva and Eden are two young twentysomethings who meet online through a friend and fall in love. Aviva gives up her life in Paris to be with Eden in New York City. After some tentative flirtations, a passionate affair begins, they get married, and then jealousies flare. Fairly typical romantic drama stuff. And here’s where things get interesting. Aviva is a woman and Eden is a man, except each character is played by both a woman and a man—but it’s not as confusing as one would think.

Dance is part of the DNA of Aviva. Sometimes it’s woven into the plot, sometimes it’s more of an abstraction. The other DNA strand is sex, lots of sex, and nudity, so much nudity. Practically every time a new character is introduced, there is a static shot of each one posing nude. Even the day players, an immigration lawyer, for instance, go au naturel. Why? Perhaps something about how being seen as physically vulnerable would help us feel emotionally vulnerable. Maybe?

There is also a lot of talking. It’s as if Yakin thought to himself, “What if I made a mid-period Woody Allen drama, like Interiors and Another Woman, except with hot twentysomethings and just oodles of sex?” Of course, that would be fine, if the characters were saying something provocative. But this is like watching a two-hour therapy session where the therapist decided to clock out for lunch, leaving the patients in psychoanalytic verbal hyperdrive. It’s excruciating and overwhelming and, as stated, most of the actors are dancers, and a few are not always up to the task of lifting the dialogue off the page. With a round-robin of four actors playing two characters, your mind may either drift or become overloaded.

That being said, anytime dancing shows up, Aviva absolutely springs to life. The choreography by Smith and Or Schraiber, who plays one half of Aviva, is fairly astounding and provides the emotional work that the rest of the film isn’t up to. The wedding dance in particular is just wonderful and surprising and vibrant. There’s a sequence between a man and woman (naked, of course) in a white room that is touching, as well as a brilliant bit by Smith, as Eden (half of Eden, anyway), dancing her way with narration through a trip to the airport and onto a plane while remaining in a rehearsal studio. This, and the admittedly hot sex, almost makes the film worth sitting through.

But then a character start talking directly to the camera about how he hates it when people sing in musicals, or there’s another argument that you’ve heard in a hundred other films before but with sharper dialogue. And the roundelay goes on and on and on.

So, to recap:
Dancing: Exquisite
Sex: Hot
Dialogue: Affected

Also, it’s about 20 minutes too long. If you can sit through the dialogue to get to the sex and the dancing, you may find Aviva worth your while.