Abstract
Diva (1981) is a film which has given rise to many different critical approaches, amongst them psychoanalytical critiques. This article reviews those critiques briefly before developing a new approach using the work of Melanie Klein. The purpose of the article is not just to revisit a key film of the 1980s, but to show how a different psychoanalytic framework from that used in Screen Theory can illuminate spectatorial pleasure, which, it is argued, depends on the replay of what Klein calls ‘splitting procedures’.