Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed. All these characters twist their way through an intricate and stylish French language thriller.
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Stars: Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Frédéric Andréi, Richard Bohringer.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082269/
2 songs in the Soundtracks, both sung by WF:
- L'air de la 'La Wally', Composed by Alfredo Catalani
- Ave Maria, Composed by Charles Gounod
The score by Vladimir Cosma is also very good. The film's soundtrack is currently on AmazonPrime.
I don't remember when I first saw this film, but I don't think it was in a theatre. Maybe I rented a VHS. Because of this film, I have the opera La Wally on vinyl, not cd, so my first viewing predates Netflix.
The plot has unbelievably many coincidences, but it's well done, so I won't quibble. I definitely was not sure whether everyone the postman (the opera fan) was trusting was indeed trustworthy, so I would agree with the genre Thriller. Too bad we didn't get more music performed, so it could also get genre Music.
In the film, the bootleg tape of WF's performance of La Wally is highly sought, because she refuses to be recorded. (The other tape is unrelated, one of the coincidences.) Interesting that WF, the real opera singer who plays the Diva, has only 1 opera performance listed in IMDb (although recall that I've added multiple operas already, with my paltry 50 opera collection. and at least 1 was old.) That is from Paris Opera, La Bohème (1980) with Domingo, Te Kanawa & Tom Krause; WF is Musetta. I do not find it online, nor on dvd, either here or in UK. Diva is WF's only film credit. Boheme was TV. WF has plenty of albums recorded and available. Per Wikipedia, she has performed Bess, Carmen, Carmen Jones and Aida.
I'm glad to have watched this today.
distr. UA, dir. Beineix; 7+
