Patsha Bay Mukuna as Riva (Photo: Music Box Films)

Written, Produced & Directed by Djo Tunda Wa Munga
Released by Music Box Films
Lingala & French with English subtitles
Democratic Republic of the Congo. 96 min. Rated R
With Patsha Bay Mukuna, Manie Malone, Hoji Fortuna, Alex Herbo, Marlene Longange, Diplome Amekindra & Angelique Mbumba

Viva Riva! is the first film to be released in the U.S. from what’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s second claim to fame: it’s a taboo-busting, raunchy-and-rude crime potboiler, a departure from the few sub-Saharan films that find their way here, mainly art house fare largely funded by European coin, like Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man, or well-meaning, touchy feely films from South Africa—White Wedding, Tsosti, take your pick. Viva Riva!, however,  plays dirty, a buoyant throwback to the glory (and gory) days of the grindhouse. All you need is an empty beer bottle to roll down the aisle. It’s highly likely that you haven’t seen an African-made film quite like this—an explicit sex scene here will do for bathroom windows what visiting rooms did for Midnight Express.

Brash and devil-may-care, Riva is a likable antihero. Though he’s never starred, let alone acted, in a film before, musician Patsha Bay Mukuna, in the title role, has an easy-going swagger and charm to spare. Riva has just returned to his hometown of Kinshasa a richer man after 10 years living in neighboring Angola—he has siphoned a payload of black-market gasoline, which, in short supply, is a hot commodity. His boss, a zoot-suited mob kingpin out of Central Casting, wants his gas back, and will blackmail a woman military commander (who has many agendas of her own) into tracking down the spendthrift Riva.

Yet the Angolan strongman and his posse of thugs are the lesser of two dangers. On his first night back, Riva hits the town with a childhood friend and visits his favorite brothel—he wants the girl with the firmest breasts. And at a club afterwards, Riva pursues the most beautiful woman there, the modelesque, henna-haired Nora, incidentally the mistress of the most powerful gangster in the city. As the goddess-as-whore Nora, debut actress Manie Malone is a true discovery. Stunning, aloof, disdainful, her gangster mol belongs to the same sorority as Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, though without the coke habit but with plenty of demons. She, like everyone else in the movie, is on the make—for money, drugs, or sex, whatever you got. Even a man of the cloth breaks a commandment or two. First-time feature filmmaker Djo Tunda Wa Munga has stacked the film with stock characters, and some of his cast act accordingly. Malone, however, didn’t receive the same memo. She plays the kept woman with more dimension than the script allows. Hers is perhaps the film’s most well-rounded character.  

Filmed on location, the street life gives off a blast of energy. The vibrant and varied soundtrack includes homegrown hits from the 1970s and Afro-dance tracks. That and the pace keep the story barreling along, busting through the inevitable double-crosses that pile up and weigh down the end, to the point where you know who will betray Riva and when. It’s only then that all of the wheeling and dealing feels robotic.