Before Luc Besson turned Paris into a neon-lit playground with Subway and The Fifth Element, Jean-Jacques Beineix got there first. His 1981 debut Diva is widely credited with launching the Cinéma du look movement — a wave of French filmmaking that prioritized visual style above all else. Whether that’s a compliment or a warning depends entirely on your patience for movies that look incredible but sometimes forget they need to hold together. Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD gives serious cinephile collectors a chance to decide for themselves.

Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a young Parisian postman, illegally records a performance by a reclusive opera soprano, Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who has famously never allowed her voice to be captured on tape. That single act of obsessive fandom sets off a chain reaction. Taiwanese bootleggers want the recording. A prostitute slips a second tape into Jules’s bag, this one implicating a police chief in a drug trafficking ring. Suddenly Jules is being chased by criminals, corrupt cops, and bootleggers through the streets and Metro tunnels of Paris.

The Metro chase sequence is the film’s calling card, and it holds up. Beineix stages it with real kinetic energy, and Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography captures Paris as both impossibly gorgeous and slightly dangerous. Vladimir Cosma’s score blends opera with synth textures in ways that feel surprisingly modern.

The problem is that Diva too often tips from stylish into self-conscious. Beineix has so many ideas about how to shoot Paris as a fantasy wonderland that the thriller mechanics get lost in the visual showboating. The film’s style-over-substance reputation within the Cinéma du look movement isn’t unearned.

That said, there’s a lot to enjoy here if you let the vibe carry you. Richard Bohringer is magnetic as Gorodish, a mysterious bohemian who functions as a kind of puppet master within the plot. Thuy An Luu brings deadpan charm as his young companion Alba. And the central romance between Jules and Cynthia has a tenderness that grounds the more outlandish plot mechanics. The film earned César Awards for Beineix’s direction, Rousselot’s cinematography, and Cosma’s music — all well deserved.

Kino Lorber’s 4K disc offers a new HDR/Dolby Vision master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. The image is rich and textured, with the film’s careful color contrasts between Jules’s sparse loft and Cynthia’s opulent hotel coming through beautifully. The extras package is one of the more generous in Kino’s recent catalog: a new commentary from critic Simon Abrams, scene-specific commentary from Beineix himself, an introduction by Professor Phil Powrie, and interviews with Cosma, Rousselot, Andréi, Bohringer, and several other cast and crew members. For a cult film that nearly didn’t get distributed at all — the producers reportedly hated the title and Beineix’s entire approach — this is a remarkably comprehensive tribute.

Diva is one of those films that’s easier to admire than to love. But when its best moments land, they remind you why an entire movement took its cues from what Beineix built here. This terrific new release makes the strongest possible case for giving it another look.