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Diva(2007)
Rialto Pictures Nov 2, 2007 | Limited
Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed all twist their way through an intricate and stylish French-language thriller.
Releases
Original Release | Nov 2, 2007
2022 Re-release | May 6, 2022
Box Office
All Releases (2)
$183,425
$0
$183,425
$105,203
$105,203
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Mono
Aspect Ratio: 1.66 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: France
Language: French,English,Italian,Latin
Showtimes
Your Location or
(U.S. Only)
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Meet Jules. He's a young postman in Paris, and he's a huge opera fan. He's especially obsessed with Cynthia Hawkins, a beautiful and celebrated American soprano who has never allowed her singing to be recorded. Jules attends a recital where Hawkins sings the aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" from the opera La Wally. He covertly makes a high-quality bootleg recording of her performance using a Nagra professional tape recorder. After the performance, he goes backstage to a meet-and-greet with Hawkins and has a brief conversation with her as he gets her autograph, then he manages to steal the outfit she was wearing during the performance.We next see a young woman in the Gare St. Lazare train station. She's barefoot and there are a couple of men in pursuit. She's also holding her side, suggesting that she might be injured somehow. As she exits the train station she spots a moped, which belongs to Jules. She slips something into the moped's saddle bag. Across the street, two people spot the woman, identifying her as Nadia. Jules returns to his moped and accidentally bumps into Nadia. As he helps her up, her pursuers shove him away and make a grab for her. When she breaks their grip, she begins to run but one of the men stabs her to death, then they leave. The couple across the street run over to help, but it's too late.We learn shortly after that Nadia was a prostitute who was in possession of a cassette tape containing her recorded testimony, which exposes a senior police officer, Division Commissioner Jean Saporta, as being the boss of a drug trafficking and prostitution racket. It was this tape which she dropped into Jules' saddle bag before she was killed by Saporta's two henchmen, who go by the names L' Antillais and Le Curé ("The West Indian" and "The Priest").The couple that intervened too late are two police officers, Paula and Zatopek. They know that Nadia's tape incriminates a prominent gangster, but what they don't know is that the gangster is actually their boss. So now Paula and Zatopek are looking for Jules because he has the cassette. The henchmen are looking for Jules because they think he's a witness. In the meantime there are two Taiwanese men looking for him because they're wise to his bootleg recording and they want it.Jules meets up with Alba, a young Vietnamese woman who's rather adept at shoplifting. They become friends and he plays the recording for her, explaining first what it's about. She's mesmerized by the performance and borrows the tape to share with her roommate, a rather mysterious guy named Serge Gorodish. When he hears the recording he recognizes it immediately as Cynthia Hawkins singing La Wally.While Jules is out of his apartment, it gets tossed-trashed, actually-by Saporta's henchmen. He goes to the apartment of a couple of friends of his, and they surmise that it was the police. This is underscored by the friends spotting actual police returning to his flat. He can't stay with them, however, so they trade mopeds and he goes to hide out with Serge and Alba. He finds the cassette and pockets it. He learns from Serge that Nadia was killed, not arrested.The theft of Cynthia Hawkins' dress has literally made headlines, so Jules decides to return it to her at her hotel. She is initially angry, but eventually forgives him. She is rather charmed by Jules' adoration and they develop a kind of romantic relationship, which we see in a montage that takes place as they walk around the Jardin des Tuileries. He spends the night at her hotel, but he sleeps on the couch.The Taiwanese contact Gorodish to express their interest in the recording, but he mostly plays dumb. They next contact Cynthia's manager trying to blackmail her into signing a recording contract with them. Although they do not possess Jules' recording of her performance, they claim they do and threaten to release it as a pirate record if she does not cooperate. When the manager tells her about it, Cynthia indignantly refuses. Jules hears the exchange and just looks uncomfortable.Jules is spotted and chased by the two police officers, but he escapes by riding his moped into the Métro station at Place de la Concorde and into a train, exiting at the Opera House station. He takes refuge in the apartment of a prostitute friend. He finds the cassette tape in his pocket and plays it, hearing Nadia's testimony, but when the recording reveals that Saporta's criminal network includes the prostitute, he realizes she is very likely to betray him, so he leaves quickly, only moments before L' Antillais and Le Curé arrive. The enforcers spot Jules and catch up with him, and Jules is shot in the shoulder. Fortunately, Gorodish rescues Jules just before Le Curé can finish him off. Gorodish and Alba drive the wounded Jules to a safe house outside Paris, a remote lighthouse.Now, it's Gorodish who has the recording that incriminates Saporta, and he uses that to blackmail the Commissioner. The two meet in a large, abandoned factory. Saporta pays off Gorodish, but he's already placed a remote control bomb under Gorodish's car and plans to double-cross him. However, the two Taiwanese men interrupt the deal and steal the cassette at gunpoint, believing it to be Jules' recording of Cynthia Hawkins. They attempt to drive away in Gorodish's car, but are killed when Saporta detonates his bomb with the intention of killing Gorodish, not knowing he's not in it. Gorodish then drives away in an identical car that he had hidden in advance. Now, the evidentiary tape is destroyed.Meanwhile, Jules returns to Paris to give Cynthia his bootleg recording and lift the threat of blackmail from her. But L'Antillais and Le Curé are lying in wait for him outside her hotel. They abduct him and take him to his apartment with the intention of killing him and faking his suicide. However, police officer Paula has been inside Jules' apartment, keeping it under surveillance; as they approach she hides out and eventually saves Jules by killing Le Curé and wounding L'Antillais. Saporta then turns up, kills L'Antillais, and attempts to kill Jules and Paula, intending to make it look like his dead henchman shot them. Once again Gorodish saves the day by turning out the lights and, in the dark, fooling Saporta into walking into the empty elevator shaft and falling to his death.In the film's final scene, we see Cynthia in an empty Paris Opera House, pacing back and forth. She's singing to herself and then stops. Suddenly we hear applause. It's coming from the bootleg recording, which Jules has just started.. He steps out and confesses that he has the tape but it's hers now. She expresses her nervousness over hearing it, saying "I've never heard myself sing." As the recording continues and they hear her voice, he walks to her on the stage and they hold each other. The frame freezes as the credits roll, but the music continues for about a minute beyond the end of the credits until it ends naturally.
Storyline
- A young opera-loving mailman, Jules, becomes inadvertently entangled in murder, when a young woman fleeing two mob hit men drops an incriminating cassette into his mailbag. Jules has just recently recorded opera star Cynthia Hawkins' latest concert, something of a coup as Hawkins refuses to make recordings of any kind. Soon Jules finds himself the target of the hit men, who want the voice recording, and also of another couple of ominous and mysterious agents. — garykmcd While out on his rounds, a badly wounded woman slips a cassette tape into postman Jules's postbag. She is then murdered by two thugs. Jules is oblivious to all this, carrying on without realising he is now a target for the murderers. His main aim is to meet his hero, the opera singer Cynthia Hawkins. — grantss Jules, a young Parisian postman who is known for riding his moped everywhere, is a knowledgeable fan of opera, especially of American soprano Cynthia Hawkins, whose recitals he attends whenever she is in Europe, a necessity as the fact of making recordings does not mesh with her artistic sensibility, no professional ones as such which exist. With her latest recital in Paris, Jules, in the audience and who goes back stage afterward to meet her, ends up committing two crimes in his fandom, the one less known but more criminal which was his plan going in: to make a high quality bootleg recording of the recital, purely for his own listening pleasure as opposed to pirating it, for which he could probably command a high price if he did. Jules ends up befriending two sets of people. The first is Alba, a young Vietnamese woman who commits crimes for her boss, Serge Gorodish, who believes everything has a monetary price, hopefully more often than not that money into his pocket. And second is Cynthia herself, the two who bond over their love and knowledge of opera. Beyond these two sets of new friends, Jules discovers that two other issues may cause him problems of a different nature. First, some parties are aware of and want his recording, which could not only ruin his friendship with Cynthia but her career as she knows it if it does makes its way into the wrong hands. And second, some other party is after him, he correctly believing surrounding a police incident around Saint-Lazare metro station which he witnessed. He is unaware however that while the police are indeed after him, it is the criminal element who are after what he has unknown in his possession and who are willing to kill to get it back, and that the nature of this issue is a little closer to home for him in another aspect of his life. — Huggo Jules (Andréi), a young Parisian postman, secretly records a concert performance given by the opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Fernandez), whom he idolises. The following day, Jules runs into a woman who is being pursued by armed thugs. Before she is killed, the woman slips an audio cassette into his mail bag. 1 more All