Thursday, April 4 2019 | 8PM Diva France 1981 d. Jean-Jacques Beineix with Frédéric Andréi, Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, Roland Bertin, Richard Bohringer, Thuy An Luu, Gérard Darmon and Chantal Deruaz. In French with English subtitles. Colour. 117 m
“An up-to-the-minute glittering toy of a movie, a romantic thriller from France, made by a new director, Jean-Jacques Beineix, who has a fabulous camera technique and understands the pleasures to be had from a picture that doesn’t take itself too seriously-the whole high-tech incandescence of the film is played for humor. The film may remind you of Welles’ Touch of Evil; it’s Welles romanticized, packaged. It’s a mixture of style and chic hanky-panky, but it’s genuinely sparkling.” Pauline Kael
“It’s a supremely gorgeous and supremely shallow motion picture, but it believes in art with a capital A. And practically nobody does anymore.” Andrew O’Hehir
See Also: La Lune dans le caniveau aka Moon in the Gutter (Beineix, 1983) Coup de Torchon (Tavernier, 1981), The Fan (Bianchi, 1981), Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) as Pauline Kael suggests above; although we lean more toward an association with Scarlet Street (Lang, 1945)