‘Diva’ 4K UHD Blu-ray Review: KL Studio Classics

Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva, a gene splice of wish-fulfillment love story and crime noir, hardly intends to ship a traditional decision. The movie’s aptitude is palpable, as evidenced by the best way two henchmen, the Priest (Dominique Pinon) and the West Indian (Gérard Darmon), drift out and in of the narrative, their goings-on typically accompanied by Vladimir Cosma’s propulsive rating. The world right here suggests a simulacrum of the previous, which partly explains why cultural theorist Fredric Jameson as soon as known as Diva “the primary French post-modernist movie.”

Postmodernism marks a second when copies, simulation, and extra start to really feel extra decisive than actuality itself—a dynamic that Diva toys with from the beginning. Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a postman infatuated with an American soprano, Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who’s by no means allowed her singing to be recorded, slips into an auditorium and covertly makes a bootleg recording of her efficiency. As in Blow Out, launched the identical yr, a person’s fixation on recorded sound turns harmful, although Beineix retains Diva largely buoyant, refusing the tragic arc of Brian De Palma’s masterwork.

Shot largely on the streets of Paris, Diva embraces a type of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink realism. It’s typically cited because the movie that inaugurated what later got here to be known as “cinéma du look,” a unfastened constellation of ’80s titles that pulled French cinema towards the visible rhythms of music movies. Critics normally describe the motion as style-forward and surface-driven, extra invested in velocity and shade than in psychological depth or novelistic plotting. However that shorthand misses how sharply Diva marshals its surfaces. Right here, audiovisual motion is the substance itself, making a sensory world the viewer inhabits as a lot as watches.

Picture/Sound

Kino Lorber’s UHD launch of Diva presents a 4K restoration accomplished by TransPerfect Media on behalf of StudioCanal. The switch is fantastically graded, with colours registering with a readability and depth unseen in earlier home-video editions of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s movie. Grain may be very nicely managed and blacks are steady all through, and with no indicators of crushing. The French audio observe, in the meantime, is full and fitfully dynamic through the movie’s extra propulsive sequences, whereas ambiance fills the sound subject in nuanced methods throughout quieter scenes.

Extras

This UHD launch accommodates the identical extras as Kino’s 2020 Blu-ray launch. Alongside a scene-specific commentary by Jean-Jacques Beineix, the disc features a sensible, relaxed, and impressively researched full-length commentary by critic and creator Simon Abrams. Additionally included are interviews with Beineix, composer Vladimir Cosma, actor Frédéric Andréi, cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, and different members of the forged and crew.

Total

Between the wonderful restoration and the wealth of extras, Kino’s 4K UHD launch represents the definitive version of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s cult traditional.