Diva

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.

I can relate to the star (Frédéric Andréi as Jules) in this film, as i have had a love affair with an opera star. Ever since I heard and saw Julia Migenes in Carmen, I have loved her, but not to the extent that Jules loved Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Fernandez).

Jean-Jacques Beineix who won a César for this, his first job as director, really presented two stories. First, the obsession that Jules had for opera and for Cynthia; and a second story of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is actually a police drama in the middle of a love story. It will be slow to those who do not like opera as it frames the story. The music is divine as Wilhelmenia Fernandez is truly an artist of note.

A superior French actor, Richard Bohringer, and an enchanting Vietnamese actress, Thuy An Luu, provide support to Jules as he evades capture by those who want a pirated tape of Cynthia's concert that he made, and another group that wants a tape that fell into his lap that revels the head of a prostitution ring between Africa and Paris.

He is just trying to spend time with Cynthis, but wherever he turns, someone is waiting.

All's well that ends well, and this ends well, but how it gets there is suspenseful and full of twists and turns.

Overambition is always risky. Diva is so plot heavy that it almost cracks, but it is delicious and entertaining. As far as genre is concerned, this movie flirts with several, but I think it is safe to label Diva as essentially a neo noir. It is darkly romantic, full of corruption, and photographed in spectacular fashion. The colours are rich and the camera work is exquisite. The movie is almost great but not quite. In an attempt to bring everything together, it has a little climax trouble.

A tape of evidence with exposes the Chief inspector of Paris as crooked ends up in the moped satchel of a mail boy named Jules, who suddenly finds himself being hunted down by goons with guns. But that's not his only problem. Jules has made a secret recording of his favourite opera singer live in concert. This singer has blatantly refused to do any recordings, and when word gets out that such a recording exists, different people are going after it. It is ever more essential that Jules keep it hidden, considering, that he and his singer friend have become intimate friends.

Even though Diva enjoys piling it up by the pound, it does so in a compelling fashion. It is a good balance of bold and slick. There are a few clichés buried beneath the labyrinth plot that a picky person may be drawn to pick out, but I enjoyed Diva for its sense of non- convention. It puts character before character type, and tension above twist.

Cinematography plays an exceptional role in this motion picture, which captures Paris in a far more exuberant way than I am used to seeing (and I've been there). One item about the city which has never appeal to me is that it is very grey, with not enough green. Grey is the last of the colours on Diva's colour pallet (execpt when necessary). This motion picture prefers something a little more romantic or expressive. like a jazzy blue, or a fiery red.

I can easily give Diva a pass, and I can recommend it on numerous grounds. As a non-Hollywood thriller, Diva is exceptional, but it is not a film for the soft minded. It gets a bit too convoluted, not too messy, but there is a sense that it could use a slight reworking. This is not a light motion picture, but it ain't a dull one either.

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.

The first time I saw "Diva" I hated it so much I walked out with only 10 minutes to go because I didn't want to waste another minute of my life. I saw it again last night, years later, and for the life of me couldn't figure out why I had hated it so much.

"Diva" is a very stylish, very esoteric, very "French" film. So if any of those descriptions scare you, you might end up hating it. On the flip side, beware if you're a hardcore art film fan, because this movie is also a straightforward crime/action flick. So if the phrase "action flick" makes you cringe, you might end up hating it also. In other words, "Diva" straddles the worlds of Godard ("Contempt") and Michael Bay ("The Transformers"). And it has the potential to offend anyone who hates either extreme.

The plot, based on the 1979 novel "Diva" by Daniel Odier, is about a young moped-riding hero who finds himself in possession of two different tapes, one wanted by criminal gangsters and the other wanted by equally vicious corporate suits. The kid himself is mostly clueless, but he is taken under the wing of a mysterious millionaire who gets involved... sort of a Bruce Wayne without the Bat outfit. The "Diva" in the title is an opera singer who is played and, even more impressively, *sung* by the amazing Wilhelmenia Fernandez who in real life is known for her haunting rendition of "La Wally" as sung in this film. She is the one whose voice ends up on a bootleg tape, which is wanted by the corporate suits, who are chasing our hero, who is also running from gangsters, who want a different tape he has.

If the plot sounds tricky, perhaps comical, that's because it is. There are a lot of twists, turns, criss-crosses and surprises to keep you entertained. And while there aren't any outright punchlines and gags, there are some bits of humor and over-the-top characterizations that can only be interpreted as satirical. Example: the grumpy gangster played by the awesome Dominique Pinon whose only lines seem to be: "I hate cops", "I hate Beethoven", "I hate parking decks", and so forth (stick around til the end to find out evidently the 1 thing he likes).

But the real reason to enjoy this film is its artistic, stylish presentation. Directed by Jean-Jacques Beneix, this is perhaps his best example of a film style he practically defined in the 80s, known as "cinéma du look". This style is characterized by non-naturalistic, self-conscious aesthetics, notably intense colors and lighting effects. For example, the millionaire's loft is drenched in vivid blues. The city chase scenes seem to have an eery, artificial red/pink hue. And the Diva's rooms are a high-contrast, Kubrickian white.

Everyone in this movie is cool. Like too-cool-for-school cool. It glorifies classical music fans, gangsters, hipsters, rich folks, poor folks, Americans, Koreans, French, kleptomaniacs, prostitutes, good guys, bad guys, and everyone except that one poor slob who works at the carnival. Everyone is cool and in control.

Add to that the creative camera shots, for example lots of reflections (in the bad guys' sunglasses, or in the hubcap of a car, etc), and there you definitely have "stylish".

The music is artistic, but artistic in a very 80s sort of way (almost pop, a little bit cheezy at times but still cool). And of course Wilhelmenia's singing of the operatic piece from "La Wally" is gorgeous, and the film opens with a generous music-only scene where we can truly enjoy it.

So, upon my 2nd viewing, I recommend this film. I think the only reason why I hated it at first was because I was comparing it to Beneix's 1986 masterpiece "Betty Blue" (37°2 le matin), which digs much deeper into poetry and character development, while sacrificing the intense plot that "Diva" has.

I would compare "Diva" to the more plot-oriented films of Wim Wenders ("Faraway, So Close", "Until the End of the World", "End of Violence") and Ridley Scott of the 80s ("Black Rain", "Someone to Watch Over Me" ...incidentally Wilhelmenia Fernandez was also on the soundtrack of that one, singing "La Wally"). With "Diva"'s exaggerated colors and large sets, I might also compare it to the visual style--visuals only--of Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("City of Lost Children", "Amelie"), Tom Tykwer ("Winter Sleepers", "Run Lola Run") and the talented Japanese filmmaker Hideaki Anno ("Ritual"). There might even be a dash of Kieslowski ("The Double Life of Veronique", "Three Colors"). If you like any of the films or directors I've mentioned, you should give "Diva" a shot. And if you hate it the first time, be sure to try it again a few years later.