Diva 1981

Jules, Frédéric Andréi, a young Parisian postman, is obsessed with opera, especially with Cynthia Hawkins, Wilhelmenia Fernandez, a celebrated American soprano whose voice has never been committed to tape. He attends a recital where Hawkins performs the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from La Wally, and, with a mix of audacity and tenderness, he records a pristine bootleg of her performance using a Nagra tape-recorder. In a dangerous spin of luck and nerve, he also seizes the gown she wore from her dressing room, an object that will become a flashpoint for everything that follows. The thrill of capturing such a rare voice on tape pulls Jules deeper into a world where art and crime intertwine, and his single-minded devotion to Hawkins begins to blur the line between admiration and obsession.

Soon after, Jules accidentally comes into possession of an audio cassette containing Nadia’s testimony, which exposes Commissaire divisionnaire Jean Saporta, the man in charge of a tangled drug trafficking and prostitution racket. Nadia, Chantal Deruaz, slips the cassette into the bag of Jules’s moped just before she is killed by Saporta’s two relentless enforcers, L’Antillais and Le Curé. The moment is chaotic and cold, and the consequences ripple outward in every direction. Two police officers, Paula Anny Romand and Zatopek Patrick Floersheim, begin pursuing Jules, convinced he holds the key to a larger crime, even as they themselves become targets in a shifting game of power. Saporta’s leverage grows as his henchmen hunt Jules through the city, while two Taiwanese men race to obtain Jules’s irreplaceable recording of Hawkins, hoping to leverage the sensational material into a lucrative contract or a fatal secret. The chase tightens around Jules, who finds himself drawn into a widening conspiracy that seems to involve everyone around him.

Seeking refuge, Jules finds shelter with the bohemian Serge Gorodish, a charismatic figure who becomes his guardian in a storm he never asked for. Gorodish, Richard Bohringer, and his companion Alba, Thuy An Luu, offer Jules a temporary safe haven and a chance to breathe amid the danger. With their help, Jules plans a risky move: he intends to return Hawkins’s dress to the star at her luxury hotel, hoping to mollify the chaos around him and perhaps win a measure of Hawkins’s trust. The encounter with Hawkins becomes a delicate dance of boundaries and longing. Initially furious at the intrusion, Hawkins softens as she senses the sincerity behind Jules’s obsessive devotion, and a tentative bond begins to form between the two of them. Their morning walk through the Jardin des Tuileries, underscored by a piano backdrop, hints at something gentler blooming within the turbulent storm surrounding them.

Meanwhile, the pressure from the two Taiwanese figures intensifies as they threaten Hawkins with a coercive recording contract, pressing her to surrender to their terms. She refuses, standing firm against the idea of exploiting the moment for a manipulative deal. Jules, meanwhile, is hunted through the labyrinth of Paris’s streets and tunnels, and after a perilous chase he hides in the apartment of a prostitute friend, only to realize too late that she is entangled with Saporta’s criminal network. He escapes just before L’Antillais and Le Curé close in, but the danger follows him like a shadow. The enforcers catch up with him, and Jules is shot, though Gorodish arrives in time to pull him to safety. The two of them speed away to a remote lighthouse outside Paris in Gorodish’s vintage Citroën Traction Avant, a moving sanctuary where the recording’s power can be wielded without immediate consequence.

With Jules safe for the moment, Gorodish uses the incriminating recording to press Saporta for leverage. Saporta agrees to pay off Gorodish, yet the meeting is a ruse, built on the fear that Gorodish could expose him to the world. Before they can settle the score, two Taiwanese operatives interrupt and grab the cassette, thinking it contains Jules’s reel of Hawkins. Saporta, determined to crush any threat to his empire, detonates a remote control bomb under Gorodish’s car, killing the foreign intruders and sending Gorodish and his car careening away in an identical Citroën that he had secretly stored in advance. The chase continues to twist, and the true stakes begin to reveal themselves: not merely a confrontation over a single recording, but a battle over control, loyalty, and the very future of everyone involved.

Back in Paris, Jules returns to Hawkins’s orbit, hoping to hand her the bootleg as a sign of trust and perhaps to set things right. But outside her hotel, L’Antillais and Le Curé lie in wait, abducting Jules and dragging him back to his loft for a staged suicide that will silence him once and for all. Yet Paula remains vigilant, keeping a close eye on Jules’s apartment. She intervenes at the last moment, killing Le Curé and wounding L’Antillais, a strike that tilts the balance away from Saporta’s lethal plan. Saporta himself reappears, eliminating his remaining henchman and aiming to pour suspicion onto Jules and Paula by staging their demise as if carried out by his workers. Gorodish returns to the fray, outsmarting Saporta by luring him into an empty elevator shaft where the sinister official meets his end, tumbling to his death.

In the film’s final act, Jules makes his way back to Hawkins for one last, intimate moment. They meet in an empty theater, and Jules lovingly plays the La Wally bootleg for her, a private performance that forces Hawkins to confront her own vulnerability. She admits she has never heard herself sing in this way before, a confession that exposes both the awe and the fear she holds about her own legend. The moment crystallizes a bond built on shared longing and danger, a fragile solace carved out of a world that demanded more than art, more than fame, and more than either could safely give. The finale lingers on this fragile connection, offering a quiet, human beat amid the tumult of pursuit, power, and the indiscriminate pull of music.