Gorodish's puzzle

Gorodish, from Diva

The puzzle takes shape

Who can recall New Age guru Serge Gorodish in Jean-Jacques Beineix's arty French film, Diva,  from the early 1980s? It was one of my favourites when I was young, has enjoyed a revival of interest in recent years, and now has a cult following.

Above, he is creating a big blue jigsaw wave, accompanied by his ever-present 

cigarettes. 

In the opening moments of the film, his Vietnamese-French lover Alba tells  young postman Jules, Gorodish's co-lead in the movie, that her boyfriend has entered a phase in his life when he wants to "stop the waves". True enough; he's stopped them, freezing them as an image by way of a jigsaw. 

In this cult thriller, two recordings propel the plot along. At a deeper level, it is supposedly a tale about the interplay of intransigence and permanence, though I am more attracted to the way characters of different ages are portrayed in the film. Some critics believe both male co-leads are feminine; more of that unusual argument below. 

The story is adapted from the novel of the same name by Zen master, writer and poet Daniel Odier. In the story, young opera fan Jules makes a bootleg recording of Cynthia Hawkins, an American soprano who has never allowed her singing to be recorded. Later, as his romantic obsession with her blooms, he steals her gown.

Hawkins, played by real-life diva Wilhelmenia Fernandez

He also comes into possession of a recording incriminating a senior policeman, Jean Saporta, in a trafficking and prostitution ring.

Saporta sends his henchmen  (the "West Indian" and the "Priest", aka L' Antillais and Le Curé) after Jules, who is also pursued by a couple of Taiwanese hoods who want his valuable recording of Hawkins' voice. 

Beleaguered Jules turns to his new friends, Gorodish and Alba, to help get him out of trouble. 

Gorodish does all the thinking on behalf of the kids, as they seem too young and distracted to solve their own problems.

Saporta's hoods: the West Indian, and the Priest

Fast forward for a moment to the racy climax, when Saporta's two henchmen kidnap the young couple and take them to Jules' apartment. 

Here, the witless Saporta meets his come-uppance. Gorodish pulls off this feat, as one of the film critics below notes, without ever laying a hand on him. 

He has previously blackmailed Saporta over the tape linking him to the trafficking and prostitution ring. 

He lured him to an abandoned factory where he hands over cash in exchange for the tape. In this scene, the Taiwanese hoods pursuing the Cynthia Hawkins tape interrupt them and mistakenly seize the prostitution tape. 

They drive off in Gorodish's ancient Citroën Traction Avant, to which Saporta has attached a car bomb. Saporta detonates it, thinking he has killed Gorodish. 

In one of the film's many surprises, the unflustered Gorodish, who seems to have seen all this coming,  drives away in a duplicate version of  his Traction Avant which he has stashed away.

In the climactic scene at Jules' apartment, the two foes meet again, when Gorodish douses the lights and tricks Saporta into stepping into an elevator shaft, sending him to his death.

Previously, after Jules is chased through the Paris Metro and shot, Gorodish saves the young man when he knocks out Le Curé, the bald hood, with self-defence spray, once again without ever having to exert himself physically.

On the romance front, meanwhile, a repentant Jules has returned the gown to Hawkins, and the two embark on a one-night courtship. 

Young Jules treats her with a detached reverence (he holds an umbrella high over her head on their early morning walk through Paris, as if she is some kind of untouchable beauty).

It looks like idol worship rather than the makings of a genuine love affair. I thought their scenes together were sad, as she didn't seem that interested in being courted by someone so young and witless.

When I was young, I fancied I saw myself in Jules - naive, innocent, and a hopeless romantic inclined to think too highly of people.

As I have grown older, I have identified more with the mysterious figure of Serge Gorodish, who is able to call on cunning, hidden resources such as his duplicate Citroën Traction Avant cars and an isolated lighthouse to outfox his foes. 

He deploys both to elude Saporta's henchmen with whom he must deal as a result of his relationship with Alba, who has a habit of bringing problems home to his giant and almost empty industrial loft.

Gorodish, Alba and Jules flee to the safe house

Gorodish sets the tone of their relationship early when he shows Jules how to butter a baguette.

Gorodish at work in the kitchen

'Some people get high on airplane glue, washing powder, complicated things. Me, my satori is this ...zen in the art of buttering bread. There's no more knife, there's no more bread, there's no more butter...there's only a movement which is repeated...a movement...space...emptiness!'  

Gorodish is the experienced elder figure to Jules' naive innocence. Yet who would know that, in critical commentary of the film at least, neither is seen as particularly manly?

Some feminist criticism of the film argues director Jean-Jacques Beineix thwarts viewer expectations by portraying the male leads, Jules and Gorodish, as having feminine characteristics. First, from 'Jean-Jacques Beineix' by Phil Powrie:

He cites Ernece B Kelly's "Diva: High- tech sexual politics", who notes that Gorodish overcomes Saporta's hoods without ever laying a hand on them, displaying feminine-style wiles rather than blokish brute force.

Regardless, they are both man enough for me. For more about the film, see here and here. 

Update: As time passes, I am losing heroes from my youth.  Director Beineix, who could never match the success of Diva again, died on Jan 13, 2022 in Paris. In more sad news, diva Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, who turned to teaching in her later years, died in Kentucky on Feb 2, 2024.