Artist Diva

When it was released more than 25 years ago (and for some time afterwards, on home video) Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva must have seemed like the coolest French movie around—hip, stylish, colorful, full of great music, and hewed closely enough to Hollywood convention as to not be inaccessible. It marked the beginnings of a small but defining movement in French film called "Cinema Du Look," which trafficked in slick imagery and navel-gazing romanticism over anything that remotely resembled substance. (See also: the films of Luc Besson and Leos Carax.) Seen today, Diva has lost some of its original magic, since its super-glossy aesthetic has been co-opted innumerable times, often to greater effect, by contemporary French, Hong Kong, and American art movies. 

Updated 01/25/2010