[Director Jean-Jacques] Beineix may not be interested in what’s underneath, but he has a great feeling for surfaces. A chase through the Métro and an escape to a pinball-machine and video-game arcade are so ravishing that they’re funny, intentionally.

| Sep 19, 2023

Yes, this film is a little contrived at times, but it’s still one of the best pictures I've seen all year. Hats off to the French!

| Aug 10, 2022

Beineixs film delights, if not overwhelms, the eye. (And in its obsession with the beauty and power of the human voice, Diva might also be thought of as an illustration of the cinéma du listen). Its bewitchery hasnt dimmed more than forty years later.

| Apr 29, 2022

Diva is a cinematic textbook on style. It comments on so many facets of the daily contemporary culture -- and of film -- that it seems to be an inspired shorthand.

| Apr 27, 2018

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

The movie's a maelstrom of possibilities touching ethnic relations, high art, fashion and modern morality, not to mention cinema.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 18, 2008

As with so many pop moments a quarter-century on, what once looked sexy now smells a little sexist.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 22, 2008

Diva, as a lifestyle, a fantasy, a model for alienation and solipsism and eccentricity, has gone deep into all of us.

| Jan 24, 2008

A light-headed, fleet-footed French caper, Jean-Jacques Beineix's ultra-stylish Diva stormed the art houses when it was released in 1982, and it's still a lot of fun now -- though its hip patina feels more quaint these days than cool.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 10, 2008

I still loved every minute of it.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 7, 2007

Made with wit and humor, this French stunner abounds in the go-for-broke spirit of a first film made by a talented, nervy director.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2007

This is style as a force of nature.

Full Review | Nov 3, 2007

It's a supremely gorgeous and supremely shallow motion picture, but it believes in art with a capital A. And practically nobody does anymore.

Full Review | Nov 1, 2007

Incredibly stylish and visually ravishing -- arguably to a fault -- Jean-Jacques Beineixís audacious debut has aged well.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 31, 2007

Any film with this much stylistic assurance is impossible to fully resist.

| Oct 31, 2007

The novel touches, bizarre chases and plot twists, breathtaking camerawork by Philippe Rousselot and tension-filled editing, make Diva a superior piece of entertainment.

| Oct 31, 2007

Half a century later, a glut of über-groovy meta-thrillers has blunted the novelty of Diva, but its gamboling flair is still a kick.

| Oct 31, 2007

The most exciting debut in years, it is unified by the extraordinary decor - colour supplement chic meets pop art surrealism - which creates a world of totally fantastic reality situated four-square in contemporary Paris.

| Jan 26, 2006