The film year opens with a jostle of egos, a rustle of couture and the sight of two old acquaintances vying for Oscar glory, metaphorically throwing bricks at each other across the garden wall. On one side we have Angelina Jolie acting the diva in Maria, Pablo Larrain’s elegiac account of the last days of opera singer Callas. On the other, there’s Nicole Kidman as the eponymous Babygirl, a high-flying executive who’s brought down to earth with a bang. Both films are stylish, confident and generally satisfying affairs. Both, though, are predominantly support systems; showcases. They exist to provide a stage or springboard for their respective headline acts.
Maria is the more lavish and stately production. The final part of Larrain’s loose trilogy of tales about wealthy, wounded women – following 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer – picks its way through an autumnal 1970s Paris, from the apartment to the bistro to the Jardins du Luxembourg. It has a liveried butler in close attendance and trails an air of melancholia that’s as thick as posh cologne.
