Jacques Fabbri Movies

The diva of the title is a famous black opera singer (Wilhelmina Wiggins-Fernandez) who steadfastly refuses to be recorded. The singer is idolized by young French mail-carrier Jules (Frederic Andrei), who sneaks a tape recorder into the theater and records her performance. This is witnessed by a pair of Taiwanese criminals, who unlike Andrei wish to profit from the bootlegged recording. They begin to pursue the boy, as do a couple of home-grown hooligans who believe that Jules is in possession of some murder evidence. The serpentine plot leads to a warm friendship between Jules and the reclusive diva - and to a brilliantly photographed (by Philipe Rousselot) motorcycle chase through the subway tunnels of Paris. Diva marked the directorial debut of Jean-Jacques Beineix, whose obvious fondness for the more esoteric techniques of the Nouvelle Vague never impedes his willingness to simply entertain his audiences. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this second animated feature based on the comic-strip western "Lucky Luke," the Dalton brothers plan to escape from the prison Lucky put them in and kill off the judge and all the jury members who convicted and sentenced them. If they can do this, and Lucky can verify it, they may be able to inherit their uncle's money. Curiously, the upright Lucky seems to be going along with them. In reality, he has an extremely clever plan in mind. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Dany (Samantha Eggar) is the ad agency secretary to Caldwell (Oliver Reed) in this psychological crime drama. She is asked to drive him to the airport and park the car in the lot after working at his home the night before. Getting in the wrong lane, she decides to use the car for a weekend getaway and return in time to collect Caldwell upon his return. Soon she is recognized in places she has never been before. She picks up a hippie (John McEnery) and makes love to him only to find he has stolen the car in the morning. Dany finds the car and the hippie, but there is now a dead body in the back seat. She finds where the dead man lived and takes the body to the house. Dany finds erotic nude photos of herself in the strange man's apartment even though the two had never met. She begins to suspect that her boss and his sluttish wife Anita (Stephane Audran) are setting her up to take the fall for the man's murder. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this French variation on Mark Twain's Man with a Million story, a man's life is completely changed by the acquisition of a new car. Marcel, a Chaplainesque factory worker, sets out to buy an old motorcycle and ends up getting a new Cadillac convertible (the "beautiful American" of the title) for $100. He loses his job and suffers other misadventures, but is then amazed at how people treat him when they learn he owns the prestigious vehicle. Amusing little farce makes a few telling points about the pretensions of the very rich. ~ Michael P. Rogers, Rovi

Love and the Frenchwoman (La Francaise et L'Amour) concentrates on the nature of love by illustrating seven separate aspects of the emotion. In "Childhood," 9-year old Pierre-Jean Vaillard suffers a traumatic experience when he takes his parents' "cabbage patch" theory of conception too literally. In "Adolescence," a little girl (Annie Sinigalla) constructs an elaborate fantasy world on the occasion of her first kiss. "Virginity" is a study in frustration, as betrothed couple Valerie Lagrange and Pierre Michel agonizingly await their wedding-night consummation of their ardor. "Marriage" finds a union ending almost before it begins as a pair of newlyweds (Marie-Jose Nat and Claude Rich) bicker all the way to their honeymoon rendezvous. "Adultery" allows husband Paul Meurisse the opportunity to calmly provide an object lesson to his wife's lover Jean-Paul Belmondo. In "Divorce", a couple (Annie Girardot and Francois Pierer) find that it's impossible to have a "civilized" breakup. And in "A Woman Alone," bigamist Robert Lamoreaux meets his Waterloo in the forms of Martine Carol and Sylvia Montfort. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Crainquebille is the third film version of Anatole France's satiric novel. The title character, played by Yves Deniaud, is an elderly pushcart peddler much beloved by one and all. Well, almost all: the gendarme on the beat inexplicably despises Crainquebille, and the first chance he gets, he throws the old man in jail. By rights, the peddler should be back on the street in 24 hours, but thanks to a judicial bottleneck he spends two weeks behind bars. Upon his release, Crainquebille finds he is a "marked man," shunned by those who once pledged undying devotion. On the verge of ending it all, Crainquebille finds a ray of hope in the form of a hero-worshipping little boy (Christian Fourquade, who'd previously co-starred with Bing Crosby in 1953's Little Boy Lost). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi