A young Parisian postman, Jules, is obsessed with opera, and particularly with Cynthia Hawkins, a beautiful and celebrated American soprano who has never allowed her singing to be recorded.

Nadia drops the cassette in the bag of the postman's moped moments before she is killed by Saporta's two henchmen, "L' Antillais" and "Le Curé" ("The West Indian" and "The Priest").

Jules seeks refuge from all these pursuers with his new friends, a mysterious bohemian named Serge Gorodish and his companion, Alba, a young Vietnamese-French thief.

She is intrigued by Jules' adoration and a kind of romantic relationship develops, expressed by the background of a piano instrumental, as they walk around Paris in the Jardin des Tuileries early one morning.

He takes refuge in the apartment of a prostitute friend (an unnamed character), but flees when he realizes she is part of Saporta's criminal network and will likely betray him; he leaves just before L' Antillais and Le Curé arrive.

Moreover, "Pop Art decors, offbeat locations, selective colours and idiosyncratic compositions are assertively used to create a fantasy world which is only a sidestep from crime movie realism..."[6] Another critic noted that "...the seduction of Diva is in its extraordinary sets and the way in which, through combinations of light, shadow, spatial relations, carefully chosen and positioned objects, forms and graphics and matched colours, something is created which is distinctly otherworldly while being firmly, almost prosaically, situated in the real world".

[3] Beineix described some of the more fantastic, even improbable elements of the film, such as Gorodish replacing his glamorous white Citroën car with an identical one after the first has been exploded killing two villains, as those of "a character manipulating the plot from within".

[6] In a major change in an otherwise faithful adaptation of the Odier novel, Jules and Gorodish no longer split the proceeds after selling the illicit tape to the highest bidder.

In his use of locations, Beineix integrates two strong urban environments – the Paris familiar through film, in such settings as the Place de la Concorde and the adjacent Tuileries Gardens; and the modern city, with its parking lots, disused warehouses, metro stations and pinball arcades – through which the action pushes Jules, for example from his barely-furnished loft apartment to the neo-classical hotel suite of the opera singer, "redolent of the grand operatic tradition".

In the 1970s it was revived by British theatrical director Peter Brook and French producer Micheline Rozan, who deliberately retained the rough interior for its distressed and damaged appearance.

[5][7] Nadia is killed outside the Gare Saint-Lazare railway station, where she had just arrived with the intention of handing her incriminating cassette to Krantz, a police informer.

Initially, he is seen with one of the standard yellow livery of the French postal service, a Motobécane AV 88, that Jules has fitted with a Spirit of Ecstasy mascot.

[12] At the very start of the film an operatic excerpt plays over the credits (the prelude to Gounod's Faust), but is cut off when Jules switches off the cassette player on his moped.

[16] The film initially was not a commercial success after its March 1981 release in France, where it faced bad press and a hostile reception by critics.

David Denby, in New York, upon its 1982 American release, wrote "One of the most audacious and original films to come out of France in recent years...Diva must be the only pop movie inspired by a love of opera.

[19]Ebert also praised the film's chase scene through the Paris metro, writing that it "deserves ranking with the all-time classics, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The French Connection, and Bullitt.

The website's critical consensus states: "Beineix combines unique cinematography, an intelligent script, and a brilliant soundtrack to make Diva a stylishly memorable film".

She wrote of the film's visual ties to cinéma du look, "the movie's mad excitement hinges entirely on the pleasure to be had in moving our eye from one gorgeously composed stage set of artifice to another.