Jules, a young Parisian postman, secretly records a concert performance given by the opera singer Cynthia Hawkins, whom he idolises. The following day, Jules runs into a woman who is being pursued by armed thugs. Before she is killed, the woman slips an audio cassette into his mail bag...
This was outstanding. Opera could very much be a metaphor for film to me, and the great way that opera dominates the life of addict Jules here could easily apply to me in my approach to film, and ANY remarkable actress of today.
For example, if I could travel back in time, I would easily have felt this way about Garbo, who is my favourite actress ever...
Probably the best thing Luc Besson ever laid his hands on...
Despite the ridiculous premise, namely the idea of Taiwanese gangster trying to get a hold of a bootleg recording of an opera singer (to blackmail her to signing a contract with them), the movie is better than I thought it would be going in.
There are a couple big downsides that keeps me from giving it a higher rating. One is that this opera singer (Cynthia) finds solace with a young postman (Jules) who is pretty much a stalker (who stole her dress after a performance). The other bigger issue, is one dubious hero is a child predator who has a girl, easily only 13-14 years old, living with him. They don't explicitly show a sexual relationship but it's implied. I know this is France in the early 80s, just made me uncomfortable.
Still, s...
A very experimental film in terms of visuals and aesthetics, but one that disappoints us due to the poor conception of the characters and the lack of harmonization of the plot.
This film harmoniously brings together two arts that I greatly value: cinema, of course, and opera, which for me is the most complete, challenging and versatile stage art that exists. Although the film is not about opera and is far from perfect, it is delightful to hear Wilhelmenia Fernandez's melodious voice. Unfortunately, the script could have been better: there are a number of rough edges that should have been polished.
Jean-Jacques Beineix gives us a stylized work, with notes of artistic quality, however, the story he tells us has problems: it all star...