By: Lotti Pharriss Knowles
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 8/28/2025 – I feel very lucky that my parents took me to the movies a lot while I was growing up – and not just kids’ movies. They eschewed anything with explicit sex or violence but otherwise didn’t worry whether the films were “age appropriate.” Afterwards we would discuss them, and they encouraged me to ask questions and share my thoughts. I remember many of our cinematic outings, but some are indelibly etched into my imagination.
One of those that permanently imprinted on my mind was the 1981 French film Diva, and I’m delighted that it will be returning to the big screen this weekend for a limited Los Angeles-area run. The re-release is a new 4K restoration, and I can’t think of many films more worthy of this upgrade (in his review, Roger Ebert rightly called it “a visual extravaganza”).
Diva is an audacious mash-up of genres: crime, thriller, drama, romance, and operatic musical. The film’s hero, Jules (Frédéric Andréi), is a young, Parisian mailman and besotted superfan of famous soprano Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Fernandez). He attends her latest engagement in Paris, where he commits two crimes: he steals her gown, and – far worse for the diva who has never allowed any recordings to be made of her voice – he creates a professional-quality bootleg tape of her performance. Nefarious characters who are aware of the bootleg’s existence will go to any length to possess it, while another tape – which reveals the identity of a local crime boss – puts Jules in further danger after it’s slipped into the mailbag on his moped.
Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix (who passed away in 2022), Diva is considered a prime example of what French critic Raphaël Bassan called “cinéma du look,” whose directors, Bassan and others claimed, favored style over substance. From 11-year-old Lotti’s perspective, Diva was indeed the epitome of cool: the characters, the locations, the music, the vibe. Loft apartments furnished with wrecked cars and funky art, or so sparsely decorated that a girl could use it as her personal roller-skating rink. A moped chase through the Paris Metro. A man wearing a diving mask and snorkel who explains the Zen art of buttering a baguette. The mailman and the opera singer falling in love in a drizzly Tuileries Garden.
Yes, Diva has great style, but that alone wouldn’t allow it to stick to my ribs the way it has for 40+ years. Its world and the people in it are captivating, the suspense of the thriller elements is nail-biting, and one can’t help falling in love with the opera through Jules’ passion for it (and Fernandez’s stunning performances). This is no stuffy arthouse film, but pure entertainment through and through. If it weren’t, my 11-year-old self wouldn’t have remembered much about it, and I wouldn’t be writing this review today urging you to see it.
Diva runs 117 minutes, is in French with English subtitles, and contains some scenes of violence and brief nudity (trigger warning: this includes topless photographs of a young teenage girl). It opens August 29 at the Laemmle Royal and Laemmle Glendale.
