Committed to Tape: 'Diva'

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EVERYONE IN Jean-Jacques Beineix's "Diva" is searching for a tape. Taiwanese thugs in mirrored glasses are chasing down a bootleg of an American opera singer (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, doing her own vocals), which is made exquisitely rare by the fact that she rarely performs and never records.

Meanwhile, the Parisian mob and local police are searching for a cassette of a prostitute implicating the head of an international drug ring. Both tapes manage to find their way into the hands of a young postman named Jules (Frederic Andrei), a lovelorn devotee of the diva.

In fact, cassette tapes figure so centrally in this romantic crime musical comedy that watching this new DVD edition feels slightly incongruous. Perhaps a bulky VHS tape might seem more natural: It may be primitive technology now, but it was new and shiny when the movie was released in 1981.

Following the theatrical rerelease last year, this DVD launches Lions-gate's new Meridian Collection, which specializes in international films, including Francois Girard's "The Red Violin" from 1998. A few technical flaws mar an otherwise deluxe edition: The subtitles aren't comprehensive, leaving chunks of dialogue untranslated, and the picture often appears shabby and dark — ironically, like an old VHS tape — which seems a shame considering the film's notorious visual panache.

Based on a novel by Daniel Odier (writing as Delacorta), "Diva" helped launch the Cinema du Look movement in France. Directors like Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax rejected the gritty realism of the 1970s in favor of slicker and more stylized visuals.

So, despite its labyrinthine plot machinations, "Diva" is never in any particular hurry to resolve its caper. Instead, Beineix's camera lingers inside the colorful, headily stylish interiors, which have the showy feel of the best special effects. Jules' loft apartment is filled with wrecked luxury automobiles and enormous airbrushed murals, which seem all the more impressive for a postman's pay.

"The aesthetic," says set designer Hilton McConnico in one of the DVD's many new interviews, "was not really particularly American or French or anything. It's a new aesthetic."

That much comes through whether in digital or in analog.

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photos courtesy Lionsgate