Singer Fernandez initially rejected the script, which Beineix had adapted with Jean Van Hamme from the novel by Daniel Odier, published under the pseudonym Delacorta. “I was reading murder, prostitution and drugs, and I wanted nothing to do with it,” she later said. “Jean-Jacques forced me to read it with him. Then I realized it was actually light, like a Disney treatment of a Hitchcock film.”

As Fernandez was relatively unknown at the time, the singer’s profile was boosted considerably by her performance in Diva, which includes a rendition of an aria from the opera “La Wally.”

Diva heralded the arrival of a flashy mode of filmmaking, later termed by sime French critics as “cinéma du look.”

It is noteworthy, that, initially, the reaction to the movie from French critics was hostile.

“I thought I had made two films for the price of one,” director Beineix said in 2009. “My first and my last.”

After the Toronto exposure, the movie was acclaimed by American and international critics.

It played in the Paris movie house in New York City for months, gradually building a cult following.

French academy voters rendered critical acclaim when, after a year, Diva went on to win four César (French Oscars) awards, including best first film.

The Moon in the Gutter (1983) was a case of the sophomore jinx, an adaptation by the director and Olivier Mergault from the pulp novel by David Goodis.

Goodis work had previously been adapted more successfully by Gallic Francois Truffaut and American Sam Fuller,

But The Moon in the Gutter was an affair which prioritized slick, post-modern artifice over characterization and acting; the cast included Gérard Depardieu and Nastassja Kinski.  A a result, the movie made only a feeble connection with audiences, and failed at the box-office.

The New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who had found his debut “genuinely sparkling,” declared its follow-up “excruciatingly silly.”

After the response to Diva, which Beineix called a “wonderful dream, where I was flying on the wings of victory,” he experienced a sudden fall. “Bang, bang, bang: I’m shot down. It was very scary.”

Beineix recovered with Betty Blue, which he adapted from Philippe Djian’s novel 37°2 le matin, about Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a house-painter and aspiring novelist, and his passionate, volatile girlfriend.

Newcomer Beatrice Dalle, then only 21, beat vet actress and Oscar nominee Isabelle Adjani to the title role.

Her untamed performance is the highlight of a film which also boasts cinematography by Jean-François Robin.

The film takes a rather ugly turn – Zorg’s literary prospects improve only once Betty is in psychiatric institution, where he finally smothers her with a pillow. It earned an Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe nominations for best foreign language film. Five years later, he released a director’s cut, extending the running time from two hours to three.

Beineix was born in Paris, the son of Madeleine (nee Maréchal) and Robert Beineix, an insurance salesman.

He was educated at the Lycée Carnot and the Lycée Condorcet, both in Paris.

He studied medicine, then quit in order to become an assistant director to various filmmakers, including Jean Becker, Claude Berri, and Claude Zidi.

Beineix served as second assistant director on Jerry Lewis’ controversial drama The Day the Clown Cried (1972), in which Lewis plays an entertainer leading Jewish children to the Nazi gas chambers; it has never been released, and Lewis stipulated that it cannot be shown until 2024.

Beineix’s only directing credit prior to Diva was the short “Le Chien de Monsieur Michel” (1977).

After his success with Diva, he was courted by several U.S. studios. “At first, Hollywood saw me as some kind of exotic puppet,” he said.

A vampire comedy he wrote for Paramount was never made, and a contract with the influential producer Edward Pressman ended, but he declined offers to work as a hired hand. “The privilege of being a French director is that you are basically free to do what you want. The disaster is that you don’t understand that the rest of the world doesn’t work like this.”

After Betty Blue, interest in Beineix films began to wane outside of France.

Roselyne and the Lions (1989) was a meandering love story about a pair of circus workers.

The whimsical IP5 (1992) is mostly known for featuring legendary French actor Yves Montand’s final performance.

Beineix decided to move into the realm of documentaries, among them Locked-In Syndrome (1997), the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered stroke which left him unable to communicate at all, except by the blinking of one eyelid.

Beineix turned down the offer to make a dramatized version of Bauby, now titled The Divine Bell and the Butterfly, which would be directed in 2007 by Julian Schnabel to great critical acclaim.

Beineix last fiction film was Mortal Transfer (2001), a macabre farce starring Anglade as a psychoanalyst who must dispose of a patient’s body; Beineix ploughed $2million of his own money into the project, which failed.

In 2004, he co-wrote the vampire-themed graphic novel L’Affaire Du Siècle. A second instalment arrived in 2006 along with his first volume of his memoirs,
“Les Chantiers de la Gloire,” boasting 835 pages!

Another novel, “Toboggan,” was published in 2020.

Beineix once described himself as an “arrogant provocateur,” noting, “I must be a little bit in love with failure because I provoke it. It happens that when you are afraid to be loved, you inspire hostility. It’s perverse.”

He is survived by his wife, Agnès, and daughter, Frida.