The final film in Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s triptych of portraits of wealthy, influential, melancholy women, Maria stars a magnetic Angelina Jolie as autocratic, temperamental soprano Maria Callas. Like Jackie and Spencer it’s a film about grief. But what Callas mourns, in the week leading up to her death in September 1977, is not a husband, as with Jackie Kennedy, or a marriage, as with Diana, Princess of Wales, but the loss of her younger self: the celebrated prima donna whose career broke records and whose voice broke hearts.
Naturally, Maria is steeped in opera. It’s present in the mise-en-scène, which turns the streets of 70s Paris into a grand stage, complete with full orchestra and chorus. La Divina, Jolie-style, is as much a performance as a person – a diva who never encountered a rococo staircase she couldn’t imperiously sweep down. There are operatic levels of drama, too, in the costume choices: fur, brocade and anything that can be swished are favoured.
