Jean-Jacques Beineix's first film is a quirky colorful pop mixture of action, romance ,music and fairy tale that is based on a pop novel by Delacorta. The story concerns a young French postal delivery boy named Jules, who is also an opera lover & a big fan of the beautiful,& eccentric African American diva Cynthia Hawkins who is performing in Paris when the movie opens. Ms. Hawkins played by opera singer Wilhelmenia Fernandez refuses to sing for recordings, and this quirk of hers is what sets the action of the movie moving.

 

Jules decides to tape Hawkins in performance, after which he goes backstage to meet the diva, and promptly steals the gown she wore at the concert, which he sometimes uses as a scarf when its not hanging in a shrine he has made to her in his large loft filled with disgarded cars. The plot really gets tangled when Jules, while on his way to a delivery witnesses the murder of a barefooted young woman who is carrying a tape that has a lot of plot and secrets on it. Who is she, and why does she wind up with an icepick in her back is one of the movie's many enjoyable plot devices that slowly unravels as the film goes on.

While on her way to the icepick the lady drops her tape (unknown to him at the time)in Jules delivery pouch, and the chase so to speak is on. Jules charmingly played by Frederic Andrei is not only in danger from the very creepy killers of the lady, but also from two shady Japanese record producers who want his pirated tape of Hawkins beautiful aria from "La Wally" that Jules recorded. Very much influenced by American crime thrillers & film noir but very much it's own film, Diva is a delight from the very beginning to the beautiful ending which takes place on an empty stage and always moves me to shed a few tears. One of the terrific things about Diva is it's lively cast of characters all wonderfully played.

 

Thuy An Luu as the young & sexy Vietnamese model Alba, is most winning as the companion of the strange & seemingly wealthy recluse played by the great Richard Bohringer. These are characters and performances to embrace, they make one feel good. There are many wonderful set pieces including a quite amazing chase on motorbike through the Paris metro, a stroll in the early morning hours around Paris with Jules and Hawkins, and of course the gorgous singing of Ms. Fernandez. 

 

Beautifully photographed by Philippe Rousselot this is one of the highlights of 1982, and among the very best of the decade. The newly released and happily restored DVD does justice to the film both in the quality of the picture and sound.

 

 

I saw Diva for the first time as a college student in a film class art theater marathon. I'd just finished the most boring excuse for a movie ever made (no offense to fans of "My Dinner with Andre") and went in to see Diva I was floored. The most beautiful example of "disastre deluxe" I've ever seen - everything is so rundown it's gorgeous. The music perfectly matches the whole film. The performances are not "realistic", but they are not meant to be.This is obviously not a piece of cinema verite and shouldn't be reviewed as such. "Diva" is a 2 hour tour de force of cinema as experience. One of the finest films I've ever seen. 

Super cool thriller/art film. One of the most stylish movies ever made.

 

Author: Infofreak from Perth, Australia

21 February 2003

 

I watched 'Diva' the other day for the first time in at least fifteen years and it really held up. Long regarded as a pivotal 1980s art film, it has influenced many subsequent film makers, in advertising, and music videos. I'd say Ridley Scott was aware of it when he shot 'Blade Runner' and that opens up a whole can of worms. One could argue that 'Diva', though by no means science fiction, was a strong influence on William Gibson and other cyberpunk writers.

*

Director Beineix is probably best know for the erotic classic 'Betty Blue', but this is a much more original and interesting movie. Beineix uses every trick in the book to make this movie visually stunning, but the plot is also strong, concerning the confusion between tapes of an Opera singer who abhors recordings, and evidence which can nail a corrupt cop.

*

A young messenger (Frederic Andrei) gets caught up in this mistake and his life is soon at risk. Along the way he also comes to have an odd relationship with the singer in question (Wilhelmenia Fernandez), as well as a strange art student cum shoplifter (Thuy An Luu). Nothing is straightforward in 'Diva' but it is consistently watchable. Keep an eye out for Jean-Pierre Jeunet regular Dominique Pinot as a cool looking punk thug, and also the outstanding motorcycle sequence. A very good movie. Recommended.

Best movie ever about bootlegging concerts

 

Author: McGonigle from bean world, massachusetts

30 May 2003

 

Diva is a movie that seems just as stunning and unique to me today as it did when I first saw it 20 years ago. One of those movies that you will remember forever. 

 

On the surface, it's an exercise in pure style, combining exciting, "hip" visuals with great music (opera as well as some great atmospheric incidental music). But there are hundreds of movies like that. What makes Diva so memorable to me is the way it combines this stylish cinematic eye candy with a suspenseful plot, good acting, a touch of romance and sex, and even a smattering of philosophy (as the title character explains her reasons for not allowing her voice to be recorded, not to mention the immortal bread-buttering scene). 

 

It sounds like a recipe for a boring, highly stylized "European" movie, but this is a film where the excitement never flags for a minute. One of the true gems of 80s cinema. As a friend said "If you wanted to be hip in the 80s, you had to have seen 'Liquid Sky', 'Repo Man' and 'Diva'". But even today, you should see it just because it's a great movie.

 

 

Today, most films have a structure so simple, you can abstract it in one mere sentence. Diva is not such a film, it has so much plot that I don't know where to begin. Maybe I'll begin with the two tapes the film is all about. Tape one is the bootleg record of the beautiful aria Ebben ne andro lontana from Alfredo Catalani's opera La Wally, taped during the recital of the famous opera singer Cynthia Hawkins. On tape, two Nadja, a prostitute, discloses who is the man behind a prostitution ring. The man who possesses these two tapes is Jules, a postman; tape one because he's the one who recorded it (for private use only, of course), tape two because Nadja slipped it into his bag just seconds before she's killed.

Not really knowing why, Jules finds himself fleeing from the police and from the mob because of the latter tape - and since Cynthia Hawkins always refused to make tape recordings of her voice, two guys from the Taiwanese mafia, who sat just behind Jules when he recorded his bootleg, see their chance to make a fortune with it, try to get it and blackmail the diva.

 

Meanwhile, Jule becomes friends with Cynthia Hawkins when he brings her back a dress he stole after her recital (but not after having sex with a hooker wearing it) and they spend a day together. He also encounters Alba, a nice, glib girl with a talent for shoplifting (she developed a technique that makes you wish you're the guy behind the counter) and Gorodish, the man she lives with, two people who will help him a lot in the course of the film. All this is handled by director Jean-Jacques Beineix with virtuosity. But I'm only talking about the twisted plot here, whereas Diva is so much more.

 

It is its pop-art style, it is its unique genre-mix of Thriller and Romance, it is Jules' apartment, which looks like combination of a studio and a garage, it is its two killers who look like they escaped a Jeunet-film (and indeed Dominique Pinon, who plays one of the two killers, went on to star in Delicatessen, La cité des enfants perdus and Amélie), it is that wonderful chase scene where Jules drives down the stairs and takes the Métro with his moped, it is that absurdly funny scene with the blue Beethoven bust, it is Thuy An Luu, playing Alba as a cheerful girl that makes you wish you had a girlfriend like that, it is Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, a real-life opera singer in her only film role, playing a wonderful Cynthia Hawkins (how I love that look she gives when someone reminds her of her age), it is Gorodish ingeniously solving two problems at once, it is its wonderful ending I will not reveal her with the perfect last words (Shhhh, listen...)

I could go on with this list forever. With its hilarious story, its beautiful images, its weird characters and its joyous direction, Diva could open the door to the cinema of the rest of the world for those whose Top 10 list consist only of films as Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Usual Suspects or The Godfather. It is a film I immensely love and could watch over and over again.