French film director who achieved international fame with the arthouse classics Diva and Betty Blue
No arthouse cinema repertory programme in the 1980s was complete without regular screenings of the chic French thriller Diva (1981). The plot combined opera, murder and corruption, while the visual style had the sort of pizzazz more readily associated with advertising or pop videos. By the end of the same decade, the prospect of a student bedsit that did not have on its walls the poster for the erotic love story Betty Blue (1986) was as unthinkable as one without Pot Noodle and patchouli oil. Both films were directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, who has died aged 75 after a long illness.
Diva concerns Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a postal worker who makes an illegal bootleg tape of an American opera singer (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) famous for refusing to allow her voice to be recorded. This cassette becomes mixed up...
No arthouse cinema repertory programme in the 1980s was complete without regular screenings of the chic French thriller Diva (1981). The plot combined opera, murder and corruption, while the visual style had the sort of pizzazz more readily associated with advertising or pop videos. By the end of the same decade, the prospect of a student bedsit that did not have on its walls the poster for the erotic love story Betty Blue (1986) was as unthinkable as one without Pot Noodle and patchouli oil. Both films were directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, who has died aged 75 after a long illness.
Diva concerns Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a postal worker who makes an illegal bootleg tape of an American opera singer (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) famous for refusing to allow her voice to be recorded. This cassette becomes mixed up...
- 1/16/2022
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
The stylish French thriller was less of an art film than it looked, but I was hooked by its mix of operatic Parisian settings, elegant menace and moped daredevilry
Read all the other My favourite film choicesThe best arts and entertainment during self-isolation
For this 12-year-old, Paris was a dream city where a dream me might idle days away at pavement cafes, talking about art that was very probably profound, finding out about girls and smoking hundreds of cigarettes. So seeing Diva when it arrived at our local rep cinema was perfect screen reverie.
Its hero is the moon-faced young postman Jules (Frédéric Andréi), scooting around the arrondissements on a Mobylette while nursing a romantic obsession with the opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who is world famous for forbidding any recordings.
Read all the other My favourite film choicesThe best arts and entertainment during self-isolation
For this 12-year-old, Paris was a dream city where a dream me might idle days away at pavement cafes, talking about art that was very probably profound, finding out about girls and smoking hundreds of cigarettes. So seeing Diva when it arrived at our local rep cinema was perfect screen reverie.
Its hero is the moon-faced young postman Jules (Frédéric Andréi), scooting around the arrondissements on a Mobylette while nursing a romantic obsession with the opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who is world famous for forbidding any recordings.
- 5/25/2020
- by Lindesay Irvine
- The Guardian - Film News
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