Maria (2024)

 

Director Pablo Larrain completes a fascinating triptych of movies on the theme of famous women alone that started with JACKIE (2016), continued with SPENCER (2021) and now we have MARIA, which is getting a DVD and Blu-ray release from Studio Canal and starring Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas.

The film follows Callas during the final week of her life. Only in her early 50s but on a number of medications, some prescribed, some not, she complains to her faithful servants Ferrucio and Bruna (bravura performances from Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher respectively) that she sees visions and is haunted by the ghost of her now dead ex-lover Aristotle Onassis. 

She is visited regularly by a film crew who are documenting her life, the twist being that they don't actually exist (I'm giving nothing away here, by the way), with interviewer Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee) likely being a product of the drug she is taking of the same name. 

Like both JACKIE and SPENCER, MARIA is less a biopic and more a rumination and as such it's very moving. Jolie offers a multi-layered portrayal of a woman who is sick and whose talent is fading (and she knows it) but is still possessed by the desire to be adored and appreciated, not least by Maria herself.

Not as full-on a horror film as SPENCER, MARIA is nevertheless graced with sufficient macabre touches that fans of a certain kind of European horror cinema will find much to appreciate. Callas' relationship with her servants echoes both Gloria Holden's in Lambert Hillyer's 1936 DRACULA'S DAUGHTER and Delphine Seyrig's in Harry Kumel's 1971 DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS. Larrain's prowling camera renders Callas' luxurious French apartment sinister, with the set dressing of numerous plaster busts and costumes adding to the haunting atmosphere. The constant moving of a piano reflects Callas' own restlessness and the excellent screenplay by Stephen Knight (who also wrote SPENCER) is filled with dialogue that could as easily be being spoken by an aeons-old vampire as an opera diva ('Happiness never produced a beautiful melody.')  It's interesting to note that Larrain's film before this, EL CONDE, portrayed the historical figure of Augusto Pinochet as an actual vampire, suggesting Larrain's body of work is building into something that promises to become even more fascinating than it is now. Studio Canal's Blu-ray has no extras apart from different sound mixes. Here's the trailer:

Pablo Larrain's MARIA is out on Blu-ray and DVD from Studio Canal on Monday 31st March 2025