I watched Jean-Jacques Beineix's film DIVA today.
It is 36 years old and still as stunning and fresh as when I first saw it.
DIVA-(trailer)
I was spurred on to watch it again because I heard Anna Netrebko singing Ebben? Ne Andro Lantano from Alfredo Catalani's opera La Wally when Lynn and I went to the Aotea Centre on Saturday night.
See here: I'M A HAPPY CHAPPIE
The La Wally aria features strongly in the film (sung by Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) and I must admit may have been the trigger for my love of opera after I saw this film in about 1982.
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DIVA was one of many outstanding French films of the 1980s. Films like The Last Metro, Betty Blue, Bolero, Subway, etc were my first choice for viewing and are still watchable now. Directors like Malle, Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Besson, Beineix and the like had an edginess and incredible style about them that endures and leaves behind the Hollywood crap of the day.
(Jean-Luc Besson who directed Subway, a couple of decades later directed The Fifth Element which had a strong operatic theme as well.)
Is the head character called Wally because he rides his little motorbike everywhere - up and down steps, in the train?
ReplyDeleteNo. That must be another film and his name would have been Richard.
ReplyDeleteHe just looked like a wally in his red crash helmet and faux 'leather' jacket.