Critics reviews

The film contains a famous motorcycle chase that partly takes place in the Paris subway; one of the most celebrated sequences of its day, it generates tremendous suspense while showcasing Beineix’s filmmaking chops.

A masterpiece not just of the cinéma du look but also of what could be called the cinéma du listen.

The problem with "Diva" is that its innovations are now clichés, since Cinema Du Look has become, simply, art cinema as we've come to expect it.

All the more awe-inspiring for the fact that this was Beineix's debut feature, ["Diva"] gets the style/content equation exactly right. Quite stunning.

The problem with a movie that's all style is that style becomes passe, and you're left with precisely nothing... What has aged well in "Diva" is the grave beauty of that aria and the wry, painterly camera shots... They're enough to tide us over and maybe convince the kids that hip date movies existed back when their parents and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

An exhilarating film made for no better purpose than to surprise and fascinate... [and] a sensational start to what turned out to be a rather anticlimactic career.

Twenty-five years after its release, "Diva" is still an excellent model on how a crime thriller should be done.

Sinking into the voluptuous romanticism of "Diva" now, with eyes all the more familiar with the elements of West-meets-East, comic-book-meets-noir, punk-meets-rococo popular entertainment, everything once new about "Diva" seems new again.

A brash, snazzy thriller... If Beineix’s garish pop aesthetic was ahead of its time, it wasn’t by much... 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.

Beineix's wonderfully stylish thriller was largely responsible for the renaissance of foreign language film in the UK in the early 80s and remains impressive viewing today... A hybrid of genres: noir, new-wave, and fairytale romance - "Diva" has the lot yet still manages to wear its composite nature with distinct daring and élan.

The most exciting debut in years, ["Diva"] 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.

At the start of the eighties, an unknown director was redefining, in spectacular fashion, Good and Evil at the cinema. The audience, alone, loved Diva which the critics shunned, merely reproaching Jean-Jacques Beineix for having indulged in a fussy exercise in ‘applied advertising'... Seeing Diva again one Sunday morning on Canal Plus is of course a confirmation of just how much the film is in its element on television.