For his third and final biographical film, the first two retracing the lives of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, Pablo Larrain chose to focus on the last weeks in the life of opera singer Maria Callas, played by an Angelina Pretty perfect, because theatrical.
Jackie (2016), with Natalie Portman as JFK’s widow, Spencer (2021), with Kristen Stewart as Lady Diana, and now Maria all three offer portraits of iconic women, without trying to define them precisely, director Pablo Larrain preferring to proceed with small touches that play on emotions, leaving the film buff complete freedom of interpretation.
What do they have in common? Their tragic fate. And the man who made it all happen. Because Maria Callas, the immense opera singer, addicted to pills which give her hallucinations, is haunted by the memory of Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), the Greek shipowner, second husband of Jackie Kennedy (no, this is not a coincidence).
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MUBI
As in the two previous films, Pablo Larrain requires work from the spectator, that of detaching himself from the actress, a particularly complex exercise in the case of Angelina Jolie (as had already been the case for The exchange by Clint Eastwood, released in 2008), whose face is too special to be completely forgotten. But the actress (who will probably, and rightly, receive an Oscar nomination) and the director achieve this thanks to the flashbacks to Maria Callas’s youth and the close-ups on her face decked out in thick-lensed glasses.
With Pablo Larrain, the details change everything and it is their accumulation that allows us to enter into the psychology of the character. Maria teems with allusions or lines leaving no doubt: the opera costumes, the piano that Maria wants her servant Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) to move, the poodles that Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) takes care of, her governess, the costumes of his most famous roles, this imaginary journalist called Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who comes to ask him questions, etc.
Everything is bathed in music, that of Verdi, Bellini or Puccini to name only these composers (no, it is not the actress who sings, even if she worked on her voice for months), reinforcing the feeling of tragedy that grips us when the curtain comes down for the last time.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Maria arrives on cinema screens on November 27 and on MUBI from December 11.
