Diva

According to IMDB.com, the tagline for Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 French film, "Diva", is "A Comedy. A Thriller. A Romance." and that tagline perfectly sums up the playful ambiguity of the film. Just because you may not be able to properly categorize "Diva", doesn't mean the film doesn't know exactly what it itself is all about. Climbing out of the rubble of the French New Wave movement, "Diva" is a film that stays away from the emotionally driven human dramas of Godard, and returns to the roots of cinema by once again embracing action, spectacle, and, most importantly, plot.

"Diva" follows a young mailboy, named Jules, who lives alone in a garage and loves classical music and opera. When his favorite American diva is performing in the city, he attends her concert and illegally records the show (possibly the first example of music piracy being used as a plot device in cinema. Come to think of it, I don't think it's been used since). The plot thickens when a prostitute turned police informant, on the run from mysterious assailants, drops a cassette tape in Jules' mailbag while he isn't looking. The cassette, containing a confession that could take down a criminal empire, thrusts Jules into a web of confusion as he's chased all over the city of Paris by police, hitmen, and mysterious Taiwanese, while all he wants is a chance to actually meet and spend time with the diva of his dreams.

"Diva" is a lavish and humorous thriller that introduces the viewer to an array of characters; an ultra-cool new-age bohemian, a chic young Vietnamese girl, a pair of bickering police officers, and Wilhelmenia Fernandez in the role of the diva. The film seems to follow in the footsteps of American thrillers of the time, such as de Palma's "Blow Out" and "Carlito's Way", yet the variety of characters, as well as the tongue-in-cheekness of the film reads like a Coen Brothers flick. Had the film been released any later in the decade, I'm afraid it may have fallen victim to that processed, synthetic cheese that consumed everything else in the 80's, but being released in 1981, Beineix's aesthetic flourishes and the juxtaposition of synthesizer music and opera serve as primary examples of "style".