Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153144 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-06-12
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 123 minutes

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

Superb atmospheric French black comedy.
Jules, the Parisian postman who is the central character, makes an illicit "live" tape recording of the opera singer with whom he is obsessed, his diva. She has never made a recording and Jules is pursued by two Taiwanese dealers who will ignore copyright proprieties and mass produce the tape.

Intertwined with this plot is a second, in which Jules is pursued by two mobsters, and the police, hunting a second tape; this time an account of the rackets run by Mr Big by his mistress. Jules has two allies however who help him through a series of scrapes.

A brilliant "chase based" thriller set in the seedy underworld of Paris. Well paced, the use of plot and sub-plot captures the raw atmosphere of contemporary Paris and results in the finest of a genre of films such as Le Cop, Subway and Dede.

Not to be missed

Dilightfull!!
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 .

A French crime-chase thriller, and stylishly done
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.