The hits keep coming.
Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva (1982) and Betty Blue (1986) (which I just re-watched last year!) had a massive impact on me back in the day. The delirious chase in DIVA, through the Paris subways, is almost unmatched. It remains a high bar. Either do it THAT way, or don’t even try. The chase is audacious and if you’ve seen it once, you never ever forget it.
Beatrice Dalle had been in Beineix’s Moon in the Gutter, which didn’t catch on with audiences (or at Cannes) – but it is well worth seeking out. (My pal Jeremy Richey named his whole blog after that movie.) Then came Betty Blue, which spread like a wildfire around the world. It’s rare you watch someone explode into the kind of stardom Dalle achieved. That kind of stardom doesn’t happen anymore. The landscape is too diffused. There are too many outlets. To become as big as she did – in a world before word could even spread quickly … now THAT’S fame. It’s what happened to Julia Roberts. Beatrice Dalle didn’t give a performance in Betty Blue. It felt more like an “arrival”. Instant international superstar. If you were around then, you remember what a senSAtion she was. From the first moment her adorable feet appeared in the doorway of that beach shack …
… you are on her side.
Beineix clearly loved her so much. You can tell in how he films her.
Beineix’s style was romantic and operatic. I mean, Diva, right?
He uses deep rich colors and has extreme sensitivity to the poetry/romance of an environment. Beineix was one of those movie-mad French directors, spending years as an assistant director, before taking the helm. He was, to use a cliche, a kid in a candy store. He REVELED in the art of film. In what film could do.
Like those beach shacks on stilts in Betty Blue. The quality of the sunlight. The colors. So tactile. The environment is so alive – but not strictly realistic – it’s poetic realism. You look at those shacks and think: If you lived there, of course you’d fall madly in love with an exciting – and unstable – and adorable girl. Of course! The sunsets alone tell you what’s going to happen.
I saw Betty Blue back then, and didn’t see it again for 15 years or whatever. When I re-visited it, I remembered shots, colors, angles, whole scenes. Same with Diva, which I sought out because of Roger Ebert’s 4-star review.
Beineix didn’t make that many movies. But the ones he made are so memorable.
It reminds me of that great Orson Welles anecdote: Peter Bogdanovich (RIP) said something about Greta Garbo and how it was a shame she made only one really great movie. There was a pause and Orson said, “You only need one.”
OMG, that chase in DIVA is absolutely one of the greatest of all chase scenes. Just amazing! (The movie itself is very good, and I haven’t watched it in more than twenty years….)
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Diva too. And there was a huge gap between my first seeing it and then a re-watch – due to changing technologies – but that chase stayed vivid in my head.
I’m sorry to hear this.
I saw Betty Blue when it first came out, and I still think of it sometimes. That face!
But Diva–that movie was eye opening to me, one of my first experiences of movies as artistic expression, rather than “just” stories. I was aware of it before I saw it, I think from Roger Ebert’s review, so I guess you could say I sought it out. Some group on my campus showed it–and by showed, I mean played it in a classroom on what was then considered a large screen tv. I think it was me and maybe one other person in the room. It blew me away–the music, the chilly sets contrasted with the warmth of the odd relationships between Jules and Cynthia, Jules and Alba. I’ve been lucky to see it on the big screen since, and have shown it to many people. You could say it haunts me, still.
Barb – // I mean played it in a classroom on what was then considered a large screen tv. I think it was me and maybe one other person in the room. //
Wow, what a cool memory, what a cool way to first see it!
// the chilly sets contrasted with the warmth of the odd relationships//
this is a really beautiful way to put it.
I am trying to think and I don’t believe I have ever actually seen Diva on the large screen. Betty Blue I’ve seen a couple of times when it’s shown at art houses – once in Chicago, once in New York – but Diva never. It’s such a passionate movie – would love to see it in a theatre.
I just realized I knew of the chase, but had never actually seen it – probably just a clip from the trailer. So in my head I knew of the chase, and in my head he’s tearing through the tunnels and doing jumps on a badass Kawasaki Ninja or dirt-bike.
Now I finally see it and he’s riding a frickin’ moped!
Still badass
More badass, I’d argue. lol
It’s a great movie!