Diva

New nouvelle vague, l'époque pop. The Paris of cavernous ateliers and subterranean arcade parlors and aural MacGuffins, of technology plugged into emotion—the concealed Nagra records a sublime performance at the opera, all in turn recorded by the camera. The American soprano (Wilhelmenia Fernandez) in her satin gown evokes Arletty in Les Enfants du Paradis, her moonstruck Pierrot is the gawky mail messenger (Frédéric Andréi) who lives in a garage-studio of mangled Rolls-Royces and eye-filling murals. The doomed moll barefoot in her trenchcoat (cf. Kiss Me Deadly) kicks off the roundelay, two bickering cops and two hired assassins and two music pirates. Two kool kooks above all, the shoplifting nymphet (Thuy Ann Luu) and the hipster of hipsters (Richard Bohringer), who ceremoniously demonstrates the ritual of buttering baguettes. "Zen and the art of toast." A vintage Gallic romanticism adjusted to the techno-confectionary Eighties, a pervasive opulence and a light touch from Jean-Jacques Beineix. Blues and reds line the path of the worshipful geek, mopeds and roller skates and subways are absorbed into a Wellesian sense of movement. A sex-slavery ring, a crooked police chief, an arbitrary plot to get from one glossily kinetic image to the next. "Commerce should adapt to art, not art to commerce." Baroque creatures for a baroque landscape, thus the runty killer (Dominique Pinon) in sunglasses with an endless supply of awls for skewering witnesses. The Seven Year Itch, Prima della rivoluzione, Baisers volés, "the classics don't do it for me." The motorcycle helmet on the elongated statue, the old accordionist in the upside-down reflection, the cassette on a string. An unguarded poignancy enhances the stylistic swagger, as ever with Beineix, the spectacle closes on a recorded voice and an embrace. "Je croyais que les français étaient modernes." Cinematography by Philippe Rousselot. With Jacques Fabri, Chantal Deruaz, Anny Romand, Roland Bertin, Gérard Darmon, Jean-Jacques Moreau, and Patrick Floersheim.