 Dir: Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981, France, 117 mins, French with subtitles
Cast: Frédéric Andrei, Roland Bertin, Richard Bohringer, Thuy An Luu, Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez
Cinema du look was critically derided in its day for supposedly being vapid, style-heavy and light on plot: everything bad about the Eighties. Yet movies by leading lights Beineix, Leo Carax and Luc Besson were popular with filmgoers and now, the generation who pinned those Betty Blue (1986) posters to their student dorms have come of age and appreciation for the passion, poetry and subtext in the movement’s best films has grown.
Beineix was the first du look auteur to make his mark, with this stylised, off-kilter thriller. Jules (Andrei) is a mild-mannered opera fan, besotted with the title character, played by real-life diva, Fernandez. The plot-Macguffin is a tape, or rather two tapes, one: Jules’ secret recording of the diva’s live performance, the other contains information that implicates a corrupt cop’s involvement in a drug and prostitution ring. A dying hooker plants this second tape on Jules and soon the poor lad is on the run from cops, two oddball hit men (including regular Jean-Pierre Jeunet collaborator, Dominique Pinon) and Taiwanese record pirates out to blackmail the diva.
Part-thriller, part black comedy, part fairytale, whether viewers find Diva’s fanciful, semi-surrealistic style beguiling or infuriating, largely comes down to a matter of personal taste. If Beineix’s fusion of high art and pop culture turns you off then fare enough, but look a little closer and you’ll notice the lush, colour-saturated images are reminiscent of Jean Cocteau and the great-granddaddy of surrealist thrillers: Louis Feuillade. Beineix draws from the bande dessinées: French comic books recognized as legitimate works of art and turns scenes like Bohringer piecing together a puzzle, Alba (Luu) roller-skating through pop-art décor and an exceptional motorbike chase through the Metro into magical moments of pure cinema. True, his background as a director of commercials is evident but it isn’t a case of style suffocating substance as detractors claim. Beineix worked as an assistant director so he knows how to maintain narrative momentum (Trivia buff’s note: He was an AD on Jerry Lewis’ legendary, unreleased Holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried (1972)), which makes Diva endlessly re-watchable whereas most films by ad-men are as frozen as paint on canvas.
A great deal of Diva’s charm lies in its core trio: Jules stumbles, baffled, from one mess into another, part Antoine Doinel, part Harold Lloyd; Bohringer’s Zen-philosopher is compelling even in his stillness, always two steps ahead of everyone else; while Luu is appealingly wide-eyed and coquettish, sharing such a natural rapport with Andrei that their relationship becomes more compelling than the one he has with the Diva. Fernandez sings Avé Maria and extracts from Catalani’s La Wally beautifully, but her character remains somewhat remote and diffident. The plot isn’t driven by romance, but the bond between an artist and a devoted fan, which is somewhat harder to involve an audience. As cinema du look was absorbed into the mainstream, Carax burnt out, Besson became a superstar and Beineix hasn’t been this good in years. Savour Diva like a fine wine and raise a glass to cinema du look. |
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