Diva (1982)

Touches You

The Worst Film Ever

Such a frustrating disappointment

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is where I found this French film, it had a good sounding title and was rated well by critics, so I looked forward to what it would offer. Basically in Paris, France, young postman Jules (Frédéric Andréi) lives a bohemian lifestyle, and he has a small circle of friends, but more than anything he is a great fan of opera, especially the beautiful, celebrated and exceptional American opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez). Cynthia has never had her voice or performances recorded, and refuses to do so, Jules attends her latest performance, and being obsessive secretly and illegally records it on cassette tape, he also steals the gown she wore from her dressing room. One night Jules is travelling on his moped, prostitute Nadia Kalonsky (Chantal Deruaz) drops another tape into his bag, it contains the prostitute's testimony about high-ranking police Inspector Jean Saporta (Jacques Fabbri), as the boss of various rackets, she is murdered after the drop. Jules is now in danger from Taiwanese gangsters seeking the Hawkins tape, and from Saporta's enforcers who want the testimony, inadvertently tangled in a conspiracy of murder he finds refuge with his new friends, mysterious bohemian Serge Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) and his muse young Vietnamese-French woman Alba (Thuy An Luu). Feeling guilty, Jules returns Hawkins's dress, she is initially angry, but does forgive him and is intrigued by his adoration of her, they form a kind of romantic relationship, she meanwhile is being blackmailed by the Taiwanese into recording for them, claiming they have a copy of her performance. Saporta sends his henchmen to take care of Jules and the testimony tape, there is a chase through the PArisian subways, Jules is rescued by Gorodish, but he is almost killed by Saporta himself when returning home, but Gorodish saves him again and forces Saporta to fall down an elevator shaft. In the end Jules plays the tape of Cynthia's performance for her, she is nervous as she has never heard herself sing, and all the crime gangster and corruption stuff seems to disappear and things settle. Also starring Roland Bertin as Simon Weinstadt, Gérard Darmon as Spic, Dominique Pinon as Le Curé, Jean-Jacques Moreau as Krantz and Patrick Floersheim as Zatopek. It is a simple story, a bootlegged recording tape and a tape containing incriminating evidence getting mixed up, and the innocent bystander caught in the middle, it does get a bit in experimentation of style, but it has great camera-work and imagery throughout, and the operatic music is always a joy to listen to, all in all it is a compelling cult crime drama. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film. Very good!

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.

This film had a unique opening in England. A couple of young guys had bought a tatty cinema in Kings Cross, London, with the idea of turning it into an outlet for "art house" films. They renamed it "The Palace" and started up a video label with the same name. They would probably have gone broke within a year, had it not been for "Diva".A fabulous movie, but French. Death in England. No-one wanted it. Nevertheless, the Palace boys bought the full UK rights to it, had nice clear, literate subtitles placed on the film - then did something previously unheard-of.They opened it at their cinema and SIMULTANEOUSLY issued it on VIDEO. IDIOTS!And yet it proved to be a shrewd move. The thing was, being such a beautiful movie, those who were able to, STILL went to see it in the CINEMA - and then bought the video. Those who lived out of town settled for just the video. And EVERYONE bought the soundtrack album for Vladimir Cosma's haunting "Sentimental Promenade" and WWF's incredible rendition of the aria from "La Wally" (pronounced "valley").Palace cleaned up.Eventually, it found its way to wider release and after only a short time, Britain's then-trendy new TV network, Channel Four. It was the success-story of the Eighties - and deservedly so. I'm not even going to rave about it - plenty of others in this strain have already done the job FOR me.I'll just add that if you haven't seen this masterpiece, ignore the comments of the few who just didn't GET it - and ENJOY!

Diva (1981): Frederic Andrei, Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Thuy An Lu, Richard Bohringer, Jacques Fabbri, Chantal Deruaz, Anny Romand, Roland Bertin, Gerard Darmon, Dominique Pinon, Jean Jacques Moreau, Patrick Floersheim, Raymond Aquilon, Eugene Berthier, Gerard Chaillou....Director Jean Jacques Beineix, Screenplay Jean Jacques Beineix Adapted from the novel by Daniel Odier, this 1981-1982 film from French director Jean Jacques Beineix marked a new wave of French cinema for the 1980's. Previous French films in the 1970's were darker and moodier, more pretentious in many ways and a lot more philosophical/intellectually serious in their art-house endeavor. But "Diva" is a combination of art-house, comedy and thriller made up in a colorful fabric of cinematography, nuanced acting, beautiful music and an engaging story. It's "deluxe look" employs many of the "advertisement" gimmicks from popular 1980's French magazines. It's a slow moving movie, so for anyone seeing it for the first time, it should feel as long as any foreign film usually does. The topping on the artsy cake is Italian opera - the constant use of the soprano aria "Ebben N'andro lontano" from Catalani's "La Wally" is forever linked to this movie. The French cultural signature is on this but it's nothing heavy. It does lead up to a climatic finale and has all the ingredients of the typical thriller fiction - detectives trying to locate the bad guy and bring him to justice. There are chases both by car and foot, attempted murder and a murder, and the seedier side of Paris (prostitution, drugs, white slavery, poverty) despite the genuine goodness of the lead characters. It's a movie that seems to want to emulate modern American movies, especially in its touches of comedy and comic relief, and in the attitudes of the characters, who, despite being youth of the 1980's, also seem to be reminders of counterculture from the 1960's and 1970's, free spirited, hippie-intellectuals.Set in President Mitterand's early 1980's Paris, the film follows what appears to be an episode in the life of a poor, bohemian dreamer and postal worker Jules (Frederic Andrei). His romantic obsession for the African-American opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Fernandez) leads him to secretly tape record her singing voice at a Paris concert. His intentions are pure. He wants to keep a memento of her and to have access to her beautiful voice from his own home. He also boldly steals one of her expensive gowns (this out of sexual longing, like stealing a woman's panties). But before long, he finds himself involved in a plot involving a murdered prostitute, two police detectives and the head of a drug cartel and prostitution ring. The recording also featured the confession of the prostitute who was murdered, who had sought to expose a corrupt Police Captain who had been operating as prostitution ring from Africa and Paris. This forces Jules to become involved in a sticky situation and he's soon being hunted by both the cops and the baddies, each trying to get that tape that's in his possession. It also calls for the eponymous diva, who has long refused to make recordings, to consider finally recording her voice to save herself.Among the characters that compose the "good guy" group are Gorodish Richard Bohringer) and his Vietnamese lover Alba (Thuy An Luu) who is a kind of chic "thief" and bohemian girl. Gorodish is a loner, lives in a large but unfurnished loft where he is constantly meditating to low-bass New Age music and thinking of strange things like trying to stop the "ocean waves". Jules is himself an artist and collects (through theft) various objects which he uses for artwork a la Andy Warhol. Strangely enough, it's this strange poor prophet who saves Jules' lives when it's endangered by the Mafia-type men who seek to destroy the tape he made. But even these bad guys (Gerard Darmon and Dominique Pinon) are straight of comedy as Le Cure constantly expresses his hatred of garages, police and everything. The comedy is in the perfectly timed dialogue scenes. This is also a cop movie. Jean and Nadia (Jacques Fabbri and Chantal Deruaz) are a male-female detective duo who are hot on the trail of the men responsible for killing the hooker and eventually discover the police Captain's corrupt alter ego.Perhaps the most touching aspect of the film is the romance. Jules and Cynthia Hawkins have a connection - opera. Jules is an opera connoisseur and admires Cynthia so much he followed her from Paris to Munich, always on his mini bike/motorcycle/mobilette. He is physically drawn to her but they don't engage in sexual activity, not even after what seems to be a romantic date. Cynthia is a proud black artist (probably modeled after real life 80's divas like Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle) who believes that business ought to work its way around art. She has integrity and refuses to be part of a commercial enterprise and to "sell out". A more romantic and yet restrained and sober relationship on film you'll be hard-pressed to find. I enjoyed this film and highly recommend it to any French culture class. This is one of the early masterpieces of French cinema "du look" from the 1980's.