Maria (12A)

In September 1977, Maria Callas is living in a Parisian apartment with her fiercely devoted butler Ferruccio and housemaid Bruna. They are deeply concerned about the health of their mistress with the impending arrival of Dr Fontainebleau but Maria brushes aside their concerns and spends the morning instead at the Theatre Des Champs-Elysees with pianist Jeffrey Tate. They work together to assess her vocal decline as the diva wallows in memories of the past.

LondonNet Film Review

Maria (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

There are few guarantees in the film industry where perceived success of hundreds of hours of creative toil ultimately rests on two unpredictable rabbles: critics and the ticket-buying public. One certainty, however, would be an array of glittering awards for a fearless actress who collaborates with writer-director Pablo Larrain. In his previous biographical dramas, Jackie starring Natalie Portman and Spencer headlining Kristen Stewart, the Chilean filmmaker guided his leading ladies to Oscar nominations and myriad plaudits…

He should three-peat with Angelina Jolie in Maria, a magnificently staged but dramatically uneven distillation of soprano Maria Callas’s final days in 1977 Paris, where she died from a heart attack in her apartment on Avenue Georges Mandel. Jolie invested almost seven months in learning to sing in Italian and play the piano, to convincingly portray one of the defining voices of 20th-century opera. She delivers a mesmerising, tour-de-force portrayal of desperately insecure divadom, at once imperious and heartbreakingly fragile. Staged performances elegantly combine Jolie’s live singing in front of hundreds of extras and Callas’ recorded vocals.

Steven Knight’s screenplay distils Callas’s life into three acts and an epilogue, peppered with melodic dialogue that exposes the soprano’s unquenchable desire to be revered (“Book me a table at the restaurant where the waiters know who I am. I am in the mood for adulation”) and the harsh reality of not being able to bear children (“My body declined to make another self… because my body knew, I was a tiger.”)

Larrain’s picture opens on September 16 1977 in Callas’s Parisian apartment where policemen and a doctor silently gather around the soprano’s lifeless body. Ave Maria from Verdi’s Otello reverberates as time rewinds one week via a montage of Callas’s finest moments, rendered in lustrous black and white or colour. Fiercely devoted butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housemaid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) tend to their mistress’s needs.

They are deeply concerned about her health with the impending arrival of Dr Fontainebleau (Vincent Macaigne) but Maria (Jolie) brushes aside their concerns and spends the morning instead at the Theatre Des Champs-Elysees with pianist Jeffrey Tate (Stephen Ashfield). They work together to assess her vocal decline as the diva wallows in memories of her turbulent love affair with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) and shared history with her sister Yakinthi (Valeria Golino).

Maria is distinguished by Jolie’s bravura embodiment of the enigmatic songbird, who was caged by her lover but refused to fly away. The actress soars as Larrain’s picture strains to consistently hit the same high notes despite sterling support from Favino and Rohrwacher. Fractured chronology hampers dramatic momentum and doesn’t flatter the two-hour running time but a standing ovation is richly deserved for Jolie’s comeback after a three-year hiatus in front of the camera.

– Sarah Lee