Opens Friday, April 29 at Film Forum https://filmforum.org/film/jean-jacques-beineixs-diva (1982, Jean-Jacques Beineix) A single misstep, and reedy postman Frédéric Andréi is on the run all across Paris— including a hair-raising motorcycle-and-moped chase through the Métro — hotly pursued by a drug dealer’s hit team, ruthless Taiwanese music pirates, and the obviously outmanned flics: all because he pirated a recording of the woman of his dreams, the never-recorded opera super-star Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez, singing an aria from obscure 19th composer Alfredo Catalani’s The Wally. Longtime assistant director Beineix’s debut was an international arthouse sensation, playing for over a year in some cinemas, nabbing four French Césars (including Best First Film, Best Music, Best Sound, and Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography), and singlehandledly launching the cinéma du look, an explosion of visually stunning, punk-inspired, super-cool French movies in the early 80s, soon followed by the films of Luc Besson and Leos Carax. And super-cool Diva is, from its color scheme, with a fiery red accent in seemingly every shot; to Richard Bohringer’s contemplative Gorodish, who smokes cigars in the bathtub, wears a snorkel to cook, and seems to have an endless supply of vintage creamy-white 11 CV Citroëns; to the outrageous sets, including Gorodish’s cavernous digs and Andréi’s own car-wreck-strewn garage apartment; to that haunting aria sung by African American soprano Fernandez (in her only film role). 35mm. Approx. 117 mins. A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE