Review: In ‘Viva,’ a Star Is Waiting to Be Born

Review: In ‘Viva,’ a Star Is Waiting to Be Born

An exhilarating hybrid of Social Realism and feel-good aspirational entertainment, Paddy Breathnach’s “Viva” is an oddity by its very pedigree: an Irish movie set in Havana, where it was filmed with a keen eye to that city’s dinginess in tropical light. It infuses a too-familiar story with so much heart that you surrender to its charm and forgive it for being unabashedly formulaic. Even its one big plot twist is hardly a surprise. At the same time, its portrait of Havana, an impoverished city of crumbling architecture, has a gritty neorealist pungency.