Jean-Jacques Beineix (Betty Blue) made a catchy debut as a director with this slick, defiantly superficial 1982 movie about a young mail carrier who illegally records a performance by an opera singer, then gets the tape mixed up with evidence that could incriminate gangsters. Wearing flashy commercialism like a badge, Beineix fills the screen with explosions of disposable pop kitsch. Yet he also tells a fairly compelling story in the process, one that only seems to get more interesting the closer one gets to the end. An unusual experience, Diva should be seen also for the influence it had on the look and feel of movies and music videos in the 1980s. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com