Customer Reviews:
Classic 80's French Film.......2007-09-02
"Diva" now looks slightly dated (it is nearly thirty years old) but it is still a very stylish and visually appealing film. The plot centres around two separate tape recordings which fall into the possession of a young courier and which violent and determined men are keen to relieve him off. I found the film to be too slow moving at times and I thought that the coherence of the plot was often overshadowed by the stylish imagery and arty cinematography.
A French crime-chase thriller, and stylishly done .......2007-08-08
Jules (Frederic Andrei) is a young special delivery messenger in Paris who loves opera and worships the singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhemenia Wiggins Fernandez). She's famous for never making recordings. Jules secretly tapes her, and the action starts. Two Taiwan hoods learned of his plans and are determined to steal the tape so they can make bootleg copies. At the same time, a prostitute lets the police know that she made a tape implicating the chief of police in some very nasty crimes involving prostitution and drugs. The tapes get mixed up, and the Taiwan hoods and two ruthless killers working for the police chief go after Jules. He meets and is helped by a young Viet Namese girl and her protector, played by the first-rate French actor Richard Bohringer. Things sort themselves out but only after two hours of stylish, exciting film making, the development of interesting characters you start to care about, especially Jules, and a first-rate chase involving Jules on his moped in and out of the Paris Metro.
The opera recording Jules made is of Hawkins singing an aria from La Wally. The actress playing the role, Wilhemenia Wiggins Fernandez, is an opera singer (and a good actress). She probably had a lot of movie goers running to record shops trying to get her stuff. It's a beautiful, haunting piece of work and is heard several times.
I think Diva is an excellent, high-class mystery/chase movie that holds up very well. Watching it again reminded me of how much I liked it the first time I saw it. The DVD transfer is acceptable.
Dilightfull!!.......2007-07-18
I saw this film a few years after it came out, thought it was absoloutly stunning, certainly one of the new wave of chic French films that paved the way for other such classics as Betty Blue. Watching it again as an adult wasn't quite as fulfilling as the last time I saw it as an impressionable youth.
Diva basically has 2 plots that run side by side, the story of 2 tape recordings, One a Illegal recording of an Opera Diva made by a postman and the other a testimony by a local prostitute about a powerful Drug Lord, The postman ends up in possession of both and is chased by 2 sets of criminals, 2 Chinese chaps and 2 french hitmen, Dominique Pinon, one of the hitmen seems to be dressed exactly like the Terminator, Theres even one scene in the film that shares more than a passing resemblance to a scene in T2, Coincidence???. Anyway, these 2 plots don't seem to mesh that well and either one on there own would have been sufficient to carry the movie. Although not too much of a weakness they do make the film a little over long. Having said that apart from the slightly clunky scenario Diva has more than enough cool moments and characters to keep you hooked. It's also a triumph in cinematography, each scene and shot seems to have been lite and structured as if it was a painting, each frame being as important and well thought out as any masterpiece in the Lourve.
If your into foreign of French cinema you just have to have this, it's probably THE most important French film of the 80's and you can see it's influence on nearly every French production since .
Powerful and beautiful........2007-04-18
This is a fantastic film. It is wonderfully directed with an absorbing mixture of images and sound that resonate and linger in the mind long after you have finished watching it. The images and music are intelligently woven together. On one level it is a fairly straightforward "chase tale" - with the police and the bad guys hunting the main character who is obsessed with both Opera and a singer. On other levels it is about fear, greed, love, rites of passage, self-image, status, friendship, trust, capitalism, morality, beauty, class, race. It is also funny in places. As a non-French speaker who struggles with "foreign language"(to me) films I have found myself watching this several times and as a result have looked at other French Movies. It is probably just worth watching the film for the skinhead psychopath who hunts the main character through the film.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Jean-Jacques Beineix (Betty Blue) made a catchy debut as a director with this slick, defiantly superficial 1982 movie about a young mail carrier who illegally records a performance by an opera singer, then gets the tape mixed up with evidence that could incriminate gangsters. Wearing flashy commercialism like a badge, Beineix fills the screen with explosions of disposable pop kitsch. Yet he also tells a fairly compelling story in the process, one that only seems to get more interesting the closer one gets to the end. An unusual experience, Diva should be seen also for the influence it had on the look and feel of movies and music videos in the 1980s. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful Paris.......2006-11-22
Let's face it - any film set in Paris is bound to be automatcially improved by that very fact. It's the most cinematic city in the world. However, this film could have been set in Leeds and I'd still give it five stars. Jean-Jacques Beineix's career has not been as successful as he probably would have liked but this film shows just what he is capable of. It features some excellent acting and some fantastic cinematography. The shots of Paris in the early morning are simply brilliant, as are many other scenes. The story is told at just the right pace and everything fits together very neatly. Overall, a wondeful film which should not be missed.
diva.......2006-02-05
Diva is a fantastic film.
Merges typically French quality and commercial reality. It's fairy tale-like and quite naturalistic... pays attention to the detail and is quite unconventional...
simply brilliant.
a must see !!!
trust me.
invention.......2005-07-23
This is a great example of a young European director trying to make a Hollywood movie (a cop movie/thriller) but instead producing something entirely different. It's a mish-mash of styles and references that don't always work and yet it still manages to be inventive, intriguing, stylish, quirky and very watchable. Can you imagine a Hollywood movie where the young protagonist is a postman obssessed with an opera singer from whom he steals a robe and picks up a prostitute to wear it..? It's not what we expect from French films.... it's not deep, and it doesn't explore social, psychological or sexual concerns. It's plot is convoluted and some of the links are tenuous but if you surrender to it, you will definitely find it rewarding.
Stylish thriller set in Paris, that has kept its freshness.......2004-10-17
_This review does not contain plot spoilers_
Although released in 1981, the film has not aged appreciably. The costumes & clothes have little of the "late 70s tack" about them (no kipper ties & aircraft-sized lapels here). The plot meshes well with the cinematography and both are as stylish as the music. They An Lu looks quite young, but not as childish as her character's dialogue was obviously written to be. I guess they cast someone older for legal reasons - but it's one of the film's few flaws. The other slight flaw - to modern eyes - is a baddy who is not quite as visually fearsome as might be seen in a '90s or '00s film. Full of fresh visual touches and scenes.
The quality of both the visual & audio transfer are excellent. Subtitles are unobtrusive and well done. There is a laughably crude-looking DVD menu system.
Sit back and enjoy.......2004-04-24
It's not the most complex of films, it's not classic French arthouse, butit has all the ingredients of a (literally) amusing cosmopolitan thrillerand is well worth watching for the cinematography, acting, dialogue, andplot. What more do you want?
Amazon.co.uk Review
Jean-Jacques Beineix (Betty Blue) made a catchy debut as a director with this slick, defiantly superficial 1982 movie about a young mail carrier who illegally records a performance by an opera singer, then gets the tape mixed up with evidence that could incriminate gangsters. Wearing flashy commercialism like a badge, Beineix fills the screen with explosions of disposable pop kitsch. Yet he also tells a fairly compelling story in the process, one that only seems to get more interesting the closer one gets to the end. An unusual experience, Diva should be seen also for the influence it had on the look and feel of movies and music videos in the 1980s. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk Review
Jean-Jacques Beineix (Betty Blue) made a catchy debut as a director with this slick, defiantly superficial 1982 movie about a young mail carrier who illegally records a performance by an opera singer, then gets the tape mixed up with evidence that could incriminate gangsters. Wearing flashy commercialism like a badge, Beineix fills the screen with explosions of disposable pop kitsch. Yet he also tells a fairly compelling story in the process, one that only seems to get more interesting the closer one gets to the end. An unusual experience, Diva should be seen also for the influence it had on the look and feel of movies and music videos in the 1980s. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful Paris.......2006-11-22
Let's face it - any film set in Paris is bound to be automatcially improved by that very fact. It's the most cinematic city in the world. However, this film could have been set in Leeds and I'd still give it five stars. Jean-Jacques Beineix's career has not been as successful as he probably would have liked but this film shows just what he is capable of. It features some excellent acting and some fantastic cinematography. The shots of Paris in the early morning are simply brilliant, as are many other scenes. The story is told at just the right pace and everything fits together very neatly. Overall, a wondeful film which should not be missed.
diva.......2006-02-05
Diva is a fantastic film.
Merges typically French quality and commercial reality. It's fairy tale-like and quite naturalistic... pays attention to the detail and is quite unconventional...
simply brilliant.
a must see !!!
trust me.
invention.......2005-07-23
This is a great example of a young European director trying to make a Hollywood movie (a cop movie/thriller) but instead producing something entirely different. It's a mish-mash of styles and references that don't always work and yet it still manages to be inventive, intriguing, stylish, quirky and very watchable. Can you imagine a Hollywood movie where the young protagonist is a postman obssessed with an opera singer from whom he steals a robe and picks up a prostitute to wear it..? It's not what we expect from French films.... it's not deep, and it doesn't explore social, psychological or sexual concerns. It's plot is convoluted and some of the links are tenuous but if you surrender to it, you will definitely find it rewarding.
Stylish thriller set in Paris, that has kept its freshness.......2004-10-17
_This review does not contain plot spoilers_
Although released in 1981, the film has not aged appreciably. The costumes & clothes have little of the "late 70s tack" about them (no kipper ties & aircraft-sized lapels here). The plot meshes well with the cinematography and both are as stylish as the music. They An Lu looks quite young, but not as childish as her character's dialogue was obviously written to be. I guess they cast someone older for legal reasons - but it's one of the film's few flaws. The other slight flaw - to modern eyes - is a baddy who is not quite as visually fearsome as might be seen in a '90s or '00s film. Full of fresh visual touches and scenes.
The quality of both the visual & audio transfer are excellent. Subtitles are unobtrusive and well done. There is a laughably crude-looking DVD menu system.
Sit back and enjoy.......2004-04-24
It's not the most complex of films, it's not classic French arthouse, butit has all the ingredients of a (literally) amusing cosmopolitan thrillerand is well worth watching for the cinematography, acting, dialogue, andplot. What more do you want?
UK DVD:
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- Dreamer [2005]
- Elizabeth I
- ER: Complete Season 4
- Erin Brockovich [2000]
- Five Easy Pieces [1970]
- Goya's Ghosts [2006]
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- Hamish MacBeth : Series 1-3 (6 Disc Box Set)
- Hamlet (2 Disc Special Edition)
UK DVD List
UK DVD
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Diva (Ost) [French Import]
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