Riva (Patsha Bay) has been away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for ten years when he phones up his old friend JM (Alex Herabo) in the capital Kinshasa and asks him if he could come round. JM is delighted to hear from him after all this time and welcomes him into his home, then almost immediately changes into his best clothes and they hit the town, never mind what his wife and kids might want. As they drive to the best nightspots they can find, Riva details what has brought him back: there is a fuel shortage in the country and he knows where there are barrels of it...
That's because he has stolen a truckload of them from an Angolan, Cesar (Hoji Fortuna), which might have made him a great deal of money initially but will prove not only his undoing but that of all too many of the characters we will meet over the course of the next ninety minutes. If you thought African cinema was all about some villagers out in the middle of nowhere digging a well, then director Djo Munga had news for you, as for a start to get a movie made in his home nation was an achievement in itself. He had to shoot it under the noses of the dictatorship who controlled the media there, a deeply conservative regime which would not have been happy about the subject matter.
Not to be deterred, Munga set up a production with French and Belgian backers and forged ahead with a mixture of experienced players and local talent who were not quite so seasoned: star Bay was a singer in his day job, but took to the charismatic title character like a duck to water, defiant in his cheeriness and determination to get what he wants in a society where hardly anybody does. Although this was essentially a Congolese thriller, where Munga hoped to encapsulate the lives of his countrymen and what they had to put up with every day, you could see from some angles how he could have made a comedy out of the same material, such was his skill with finding the right tone for a plot which was unafraid to be busy.
At its most basic Viva Riva! was a chase thriller where our hero was being hunted down by Cesar, a ruthless criminal who wants his petrol back, for though he wouldn't admit it readily he needs the money as much as Riva does. The cast of characters are colourful to say the least, not only those two but also the military Commander (Marlene Longange) who Cesar blackmails into helping him by claiming he will attack her sister if she doesn't (not that this stops her from pausing in her enforced mission to shag a female prostitute!), and most importantly for Riva's point of view, Nora (Manie Malone), the moll of local gangster Azor (Diplome Amekindra) who he notices dancing that night and is instantly smitten.
For a film which moved as quickly as this did, Munga's script took care to lend a depth to these personalities which enriched what could have been your nuts and bolts shoot 'em up. Nora in particular is an intriguing woman, on the surface a stuck up and spoilt individual living off her gangster husband, but once Riva gets to know her she proves to have the insight that many of the others lack, getting the key line "Money is like poison" which informs the way the plot plays out: if they had not been so greedy, then they could have been satisfied with a life far less dangerous. Riva sails through this with a grin, marked out as possibly the most admirable of the men we see until late on and we meet his parents, where his father lambasts him for his criminal ways and we regard him in a new, less flattering light. But when the authorities are corrupt, and that includes the religious ones, this posits the pressing question who is anyone supposed to look up to? Seeing as how most end up, the survivors have a head start. Music by Cyril Atef and Louis Vyncke.
