Diva (1982)

Two tapes, an opera lover, thugs, and a corrupt official are the center of "Diva," a French film from 1981.When a woman being chased drops a tape into a mailman's pouch, an opera-loving postman, Jules (Frédéric Andréi), finds himself involved in murder and mayhem.Jules has recently secretly recorded his opera idol, Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhemina Wiggins Fernandez) in a concert. She has never been recorded and refuses to make any. Apparently she only sings one aria in this concert, "Ebben! Ne andro lontana" (I will go far away) from La Wally, or at least that's all we hear her sing and all Jules listens to on tape.Jules becomes a target for men who want the tape the woman put into his mailbag, which incriminates a government official in prostitution. Fortunately, before his place is trashed; he asks a new friend, Alba (Thuy An Luu) to keep the Hawkins recording for him. Really excellent film with great chase scenes, including an exciting motorcycle chase which even involves the French subway.The Paris location adds an atmospheric layer.Fernandez is a stunning diva, and a good actress, but I had some trouble with her vocal production. It's a beautiful voice, but I've heard the La Wally aria sung better. She did a much better job on the Ave Maria and the part of "O patria mia" she sang, which were easier and more lyrically sung.Highly recommended for the acting, its intricate plot, its dark Parisian streets, and beautiful music.

If one considers this as a white-knuckle thriller contingent on its narrative coherence, DIVA, Beineix's groundbreaking feature debut, is not a qualified specimen, but by retrospect, it is a pioneer piece of work which commences a specific style in French cinema from 1980s, CINÉMA DU LOOK, where a lurid visual approach presides over the essential narrative, exemplified by Luc Besson, Leos Carax, and of course Beineix himself.To each his own, but there is a difference between foundering on fabricating a plausible storyline and discarding the conventional narrative arc in preference to its stylish extravaganza. Unfortunately I consider DIVA is a case of former, not just because the source material, Delacorta's novel, is firmly grounded in its entangled involvements of two tapes, an intrepid postman Jules (Andréi) who is a fervid opera fan of singer Cynthia Hawkins (Fernandez), a drug cartel and prostitution ring in Paris, the inept police department, a Taiwanese gang who deals with pirate tapes and a mysterious man Serge Gorodish (Bohringer) with his young Vietnamese lover Alba (Luu), who phlegmatically keeps the upper hand of the dangerous game. More critically, it is a film deceptively imposes itself as an intriguing police procedural and cat-and-mouse chaser, only during the creative process, as if Beineix had lost the competence to juxtapose these paralleled happenings and commotions with a probable consistence, so he would opt out of the imbroglio and execute a visually-impressive strategy instead to dispatch the task, in order to shift the focus from viewers. The sentimental but fickle affinity between Jules and Cynthia is virtually has no bearing in the main plot at all, yet, it is the most enthralling part, as the title infers, we are more tempted to peek the high-strung temperament of a real diva than a shoddily- concocted heroic actioner to disintegrate a criminal cartel established by an evil police officer.The real-life American soprano Ferandez's rendition of Alfredo Catalani's LA WALLY (the only masterpiece he made during his shortened lifespan) is divine and instantly keeps audience hooked, but as a drama actress, her bent is pretty limited, the rest of the dramatis personae is no better, save the enigmatic Bohringer, Serge is a badly written character in the story, ludicrously becomes an omnipresent last-minute saviour and a crafty criminal himself, but what is his back-story? Living in a huge apartment with an eye-opening parade of post-pop art, one might want to watch an entire movie solely based on his exotic way of life with Alba.Equipped with a neon-lit pizazz, its fixation on opera and female nudity, all I can say is that DIVA deserves to be a niche in a time capsule for epitomising the zeitgeist of its time, when most of us have no mood to revisit, in spite of being obtrusively garish and full of far- fetched whims in its vein.

Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed. All these characters twist their way through an intricate and stylish French language thriller.What I liked about this film: Dominique Pinon, in a very early role. Also, the colors that made this come across as a new wave film mixed with something more... almost like a spy thriller or a murder mystery.Roger Ebert wrote, "The movie is filled with so many small character touches, so many perfectly observed intimacies, so many visual inventions—from the sly to the grand—that the thriller plot is just a bonus. In a way, it doesn't really matter what this movie is about; Pauline Kael has compared Beineix to Orson Welles and, as Welles so often did, he has made a movie that is a feast to look at, regardless of its subject. Here is a director taking audacious chances, doing wild and unpredictable things with his camera and actors, just to celebrate movie-making."

This film isn't about piracy, prostitution, blackmail or even murder- although it has loads of all that. At its heart, Diva is about music- no, not the loud jarring sort but the kind that occupies the space between silences. And we don't just listen to it; what is more, we actually see this music: in the eerie emptiness of Diva's cinematography; in the uncluttered labyrinth of Parisian urban lofts; on an enchanted castle by the sea; in the surprisingly meaningful relationships between strangers; and in the wild applause of an empty opera house. Beineix's weaves a world that is, for lack of a better word, hypnotic. And we, his viewers, simply drift through it.