Sat 27 Dec 2014
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: DIVA (1981).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[6] Comments
DIVA. Les Films Galaxie, France, 1981. United Artists Classics, US, 1982. Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, Frédéric Andréi, Richard Bohringer, Thuy An Luu, Jacques Fabbri, Chantal Deruaz, Anny Romand, Roland Bertin. Based on a novel by Daniel Odier (as Delacorta). Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix.
I am beginning to think that recommending films to friends should be relegated to the same, ill-advised category as counseling friends who are battling toward divorce or who want to prevent their teenagers from making the same mistakes yours did.
E. T. made me feel better about children and aliens than anything since Close Encounters, and the newly released French import Diva provoked in me similar feelings about opera singers, French postal workers, and fourteen-year-old Vietnamese flower children. I thought it the most exhilarating thriller in my recent memory, the most stylish, the most imaginative in its use of fairy-tale elements to grace an unlikely mix of operamania/record pirating/corrupt police officials/drugs and prostitution with wit, affection and visual beauty.
I also liked the references to other film directors (of which the most engaging was the Renoir sequence involving a “blind” beggar) and wallowed in the sentimental ending.
The friends to whom I had recommended the film stared glumly into space when I asked them what they had thought of it. One of them muttered something about the film being too “self-conscious,” while the other was more to the point: “Why when I see only two films a year, does one of them have to be Diva?”
Well, I will say no more except to add that I think that Diva may be a movie buff’s delight, but too special for some people’s tastes, and if you happen to see it and don’t like it, don’t complain to me. I’m only recommending it to myself, and I am going to see it a second time.
December 27th, 2014 at 11:38 pm
I loved DIVA and was a fan of Delacorta and his Serge Gorosh and Alba. Daniel Odier, the well known poet who was the man behind the pseudonym lived here in Oklahoma and taught at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and I met him though can’t say I knew him. Never got to interview him about the books though.
I know he started a series about a detective operating out of Miami named Zulu but don’t know if there was a second book, at least not in English.
DIVA is faithful to the novel and has much the same feeling though it would be impossible to capture the charms of the film in print. I agree with Walter about what a splendid and enjoyable film it was. The scene when the young man plays the Diva’s voice on the tape that is the film’s McGuffin is magical as her face transforms hearing herself sing for the first time in her life.
Ironic, but just two hours before this was posted I watched the trailer on YouTube for this.
It’s a joyous little crime movie.
Gorosh and Alba were near criminals and an odder tec team I can’t think of since she is only 14 when the series began and quite sexually precocious though never crossing the line in that delicate area. The books all have women’s four letter names like ALBA and NANA.
December 28th, 2014 at 1:13 pm
This is what we old-timers call a “blast from the past.” Thanks, Walter.
December 28th, 2014 at 9:48 pm
I’m going to look again, but doing a quick check yesterday, all I found was a Region 2 DVD. It was late, though, and I might have missed the obvious.
But it’s frustrating, after a review like this one!
December 28th, 2014 at 11:36 pm
This was released in the US in the past on DVD but long out of print I’m sure. There should at least be one on the gray market — especially from one of the French sites that sell films here in Region 1 format.
If you have a newer PC with DVD player/burner chances are it is multi region and can play Region 2. Mine does and it was a standard feature. You might check.
December 29th, 2014 at 4:09 pm
I think the film was released on a laser disc and I downloaded it to a DVD. The hot afternoon I escaped to a cool theater to watch the film for the first time still resonates in my mind as one of my great movie experiences.
December 29th, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Diva was a huge deal here in Michigan. That is because the opera singer in it, Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, was a star at the Michigan Opera Theater in Detroit. The newspapers were full of articles on the theme of “local singer makes it big in Paris!”
I liked the movie very much, and went to see it twice.