Diva (film)

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Diva
Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix
Produced by Claudie Ossard
Irène Silberman
Serge Silberman
Written by Jean-Jacques Beineix
Jean Van Hamme
Based on the novel by Delacorta
Starring Frédéric Andréi
Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez
Richard Bohringer
Music by Vladimir Cosma
Cinematography Philippe Rousselot
Editing by Monique Prim
Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte
Distributed by United Artists
Release date(s) March 11, 1981
Running time 117 min (France)
123 min (United States)
Country France
Language French
English
Budget 7.5m ff
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Diva is a 1981 film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, adapted from a novel of the same name by Daniel Odier. It is one of the first French films to let go of the realist, harsh mood of 1970s French cinema and return to a colourful, melodic style. The film made a muted début in France in 1981, but it had huge success when a dubbed version was released in the United States of America the next year. The film was successful and became internationally acclaimed.

Contents

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jules, a young postman, is obsessed by Cynthia Hawkins, a celebrated opera singer who has never consented to have her performances recorded. He attends her performance, secretly and illegally records it, and steals a gown from her dressing room.

Unknowingly, Jules also possesses another important tape: the testimony of a prostitute, exposing Saporta, a high-ranking policeman, as the boss of various rackets. The prostitute drops the recording in the bag of the postman's moped moments before she is assassinated.

In danger from Saporta's enforcers as well as from Taiwanese gangsters seeking the Hawkins tape, Jules seeks refuge with his new friends, the mysterious bohemian Serge Gorodish and his young muse Alba (the central figures of a series of novels by Daniel Odier, including the one upon which the screenplay was based). Gorodish acts as a deus ex machina to manipulate Jules's enemies into destroying each other.

[edit] Overview

The whole film is set in a bizarre, sometimes dreamlike atmosphere, flirting with the absurd and surreal. The photography, dialogue and story are in turn exquisitely beautiful, and nastily brutal. The sets are constructed with great care and symbolism, with much attention paid to the slightly surreal surroundings in which the characters perform both grittily real and strangely whimsical dialogue. A famous and influential sequence in the film features Jules on a moped fleeing pursuers through the Paris Métro.

Throughout the film, the substituted tape acts as a MacGuffin that drives the rest of the plot.

Amongst the interesting elements of the soundtrack are the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from Alfredo Catalani's opera, La Wally, and a pastiche of Satie's Gnossiennes composed by Vladimir Cosma.

If nothing else, this movie creates a surreal mood and feeling and does not let the viewer down. It can be called a precursor to movies such as The City of Lost Children and Amélie (both of which had Diva's Dominique Pinon in the cast), Tim Burton's later creations, or Hideaki Anno's Shiki-Jitsu.

[edit] Trivia

This was the only feature film role of soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez.

[edit] Casting:

[edit] Awards

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