Cadrage exquis: Reframing Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva. Issue 2 (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: HAINGE, GREG
• Is Part Of: Australian journal of French studies. Volume 52:Issue 2(2015)
• Page Start: 112
• Page End: 126
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: French literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Frans; Filologie; Littérature française -- Histoire et critique -- Périodiques; French literature; Criticism, interpretation, etc; Periodicals; 840.9
• DOI: 10.3828/ajfs.2015.10
• Languages: German
• ISSNs: 0004-9468

Abstract

<abstract xml:lang="de"> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>In the first instance, this article revisits the critical reception of Jean-Jacques Beineix's <italic>Diva</italic> at the time of its release and the abundant critical commentary it has received since. It then goes on to propose a new reading of <italic>Diva</italic> that does not follow either the damning critiques of it as an empty and apolitical <italic>exercice de style</italic> or those that, taking their cue from Benjamin, see the film as a historically-situated commentary on a specific aspect of the political or ideological context in which the film was made. Against these readings, I suggest that through thematic and formal means, and in particular through the use of the soundtrack, <italic>Diva</italic> can be read as a metacommentary on the cinema more generally and one which, what is more, deliberately and positively distances the cinematic from the political. It is suggested, finally, that the <italic>cadrage</italic> in operation here explicitly, but in the cinema more generally, thus has much in common with the Surrealist <italic>cadavre exquis</italic>, since it involves the combination of diverse elements within a single work in such a way that the logic that binds those elements together can remain operational only within the artwork.</p> </abstract>