An Enjoyable, Visually Stylish, Playful Film With an Intricate Plot
A visual delight, Diva was innovative when it was released in 1981 and is still fun to watch today. The film is breezy and more about how great everything looks than it is about story, but its brashness is enhanced by bizarre characters, unusual locations and odd incidents. This is a movie that has panache.
The screenplay ingeniously intertwines two nearly separate narrative threads about a moped-riding Paris mail carrier named Jules (Frédéric Andréi), who is about 20. One of the threads is about his curious involvement with the title character, a glamorous American soprano (Wilhelmenia Fernandez) who sings a beautiful aria from Catalani's 1892 opera La Wally. The other thread is structured as a thriller in which at least eight people die violently and brutal thugs go after Jules, leading to an exhilarating chase through the Métro. However, there is some crossover between the two threads, as when Jules steals the diva's concert dress, then has a prostitute model it.
While Diva is highly entertaining, it is not a perfect film. There's not much character development, and it doesn't have much emotional punch. The plot is farfetched, and the resolution of the thriller thread via deus ex machina is weak. But the strength of the movie is that it presents a succession of striking visual images that resonate psychologically.
The Opera Singer, the Postman, the Criminals and the Zen Master
Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Fernandez) is a physically attractive 32-year-old African-American opera singer who refuses to allow her singing to be recorded. At a press conference, she tells journalists, "Business should adapt to art, not the other way around." But problems arise when the opera-obsessed mail carrier Jules (Frédéric Andréi) attends her concert and tapes her, though not for commercial purposes — he simply wants to listen to the recording in his loft, which is reached by taking a huge freight elevator, then walking past a bunch of wrecked cars.
Meanwhile, a fleeing prostitute is murdered, but just before dying, she slips an audiocassette with information about a vice ring into the pouch on Jules' moped. Soon he finds himself the target of two pairs of thugs: Taiwanese record pirates want the concert tape and French gangsters are after the incriminating audiocassette.
In another development, Jules befriends a shoplifting adolescent Vietnamese girl named Alba, who is the ward of Gorodish, a mysterious guy who's pushing 40. They live together in a large, blue, sparsely furnished space containing a kinetic sculpture that sloshes water while Gorodish sits quietly working on a jigsaw puzzle depicting a giant wave and Alba roller skates around him.
While Jules cultivates a peculiar relationship with the opera singer, the thugs begin to close in on him. Fortunately for the young postman, Gorodish turns out to possess astounding capabilities and resources for dealing with the world.
Director Commentary Plus Cast and Crew Interviews
The Diva Meridian Collection DVD has two hours of supplementary materials, and while the feature film is in French, the extras are in English. Alas, the bonus materials are mostly dull and shed only a little light on the movie.
The director and co-writer of Diva was Jean-Jacques Beineix, and the DVD provides 41 minutes of scene-specific audio commentary by him. He discusses such topics as duality, symbolism and subtext, but the relevance to the film of what he's saying is not always clear. For example: "Software needs a container, but the container totally disdains the content of the message."
In addition, the DVD has 74 minutes of video interviews with the Diva cast and crew, preceded by a six-minute introduction. Four of the actors are interviewed, along with the casting director, set designer and cinematographer. One of the most interesting of the interviews is the 11-minute one with composer Vladimir Cosma. The most worthwhile of the extras is the 19-minute interview of Beineix by British academic Phil Powrie, in which the filmmaker is more lucid than in his audio commentary. Among the topics he talks about here are his dialectic approach and his use of color.
DVD Details
Below I have listed all the details for the Diva Meridian Collection DVD.
Release Date: June 3, 2008
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 57 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Widescreen (1.66:1), Color
French Monaural Dolby Digital
English Subtitles
Spanish Subtitles
Scene-Specific Audio Commentary by Director (41 minutes)
Interviews With Cast and Crew (1 hr. 20 min.)
