By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 28, 2020)
Diva – Kino Classics
Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1981 cult fave kicked off a sub-genre that has been labelled Cinéma du look…or as I like to call ‘em: “really cool French thrillers of the 80s and 90s” (e.g. Beineix’s Betty Blue, and Luc Besson’s Subway, La Femme Nikita, and Leon the Professional). Diva not only reigns as my favorite of the bunch but would place as one of my top 10 films of the 80s.
Our unlikely antihero is mild-mannered postman Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a 20-something opera fan obsessed with a Garbo-like diva (American soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez). The diva has never recorded a studio album and strictly stipulates that her live performances are never to be taped and/or reproduced in any medium.
An enraptured Jules attends one of her concerts and makes a high-quality bootleg recording, for his own edification. By pure chance, a pair of nefarious underworld characters witness Jules making the surreptitious recording and glean a potential goldmine in the tape, sparking a chain of events that turns his life upside down.
Slick, stylish and cheeky with an international cast, Diva is an entertaining pop-art mélange of neo-noir, action-thriller, and comic-book fantasy. Chockablock with quirky characters, from a pair of hipster hit men (Gérard Darmon and Dominique Pinon) who hound Jules to his savior, a Zen-like international man of mystery named Gorodish (scene-stealer Richard Bohringer) who is currently “going through his cool period” as his precocious teenage girlfriend (Thuy Ann Luu) informs Jules.
I have owned 2 DVD versions of the film over the years, the transfers were passable but less-than-ideal. Kino’s Blu-ray, while still not the diamond quality I’d been hoping for (it is obviously not restored) it is by far the best-looking print I’ve seen of the film. Extras include interviews with members of the cast and crew (which have already appeared on a previous DVD edition) and a brand new commentary track by film critic Simon Abrams. A real gem!