Maria's House

Callas lives in the company of her servants and dogs in a huge apartment in Paris. Onassis has left her, and her career no longer shines due to various health problems and a voice that is no longer what it once was.

Divided into acts (how cliché!), the film retraces a brief period of the opera singer’s life, just before her death, but through a series of black-and-white flashbacks (how cliché!), it also shows glimpses of her meeting with Onassis, parts of her difficult adolescence, and some memorable performances (memorable for Callas, less so for Jolie. When we see her on stage singing, her acting even borders on unintentional ridicule).

Maria is a broken doll, stuffed with psychotropic drugs, her life flows between reality and hallucinations, but we’re not in the realm of Polanski’s Repulsion—Callas’ visions are melancholic, not horrific (unlike Diana’s in the previous Spencer, which was horror).

Larraín, in his third biographical film about real female figures—after the political film (Jackie) and the horror one (Spencer)—tries his hand at a sort of comedy. Irony abounds, especially in some duets between the protagonist and her butler.

Larraín loves Callas, and it shows; he wants to portray her as compassionately as possible. This prevents him from creating a complex and ambiguous character as he did with Kennedy and Spencer. There is no original cinematic idea behind Maria, just a tribute to the artist, drawn with love and respect. Larraín’s critical abilities lose their strength. There’s no social or cultural analysis, no nuance—everything is much clearer. Jackie was portrayed as a megalomaniacal narcissist, partially overshadowed by her husband, and her figure allowed the director to explore themes important to him, such as power management and faith. Diana in Spencer was both victim and executioner of herself, and the royal family seemed like a mafia clan. Maria is just the victim of a failed love and a traumatic childhood/adolescence. Larraín adores her so much that he even turns her into a Marxist (treating the servants with kid gloves, despite having some tantrums).

Her pain is made glamorous and plastic, Jolie suffers in a pose, as if on the set of a Vogue photoshoot.

The historical reconstruction is impressive, and the work on the set design and the furnishings in Callas’ house is monumental, very similar to the real ones.

The flashbacks with Onassis feel like stock sequences from any love movie.

The simplest of the biographical trilogy by Pablo Larraín, the one that seems most deliberately designed to push Angelina Jolie for a nomination at the 2025 Academy Awards.

The Chilean director's first commercial film.

05-Jan-2025 by Emanuele