The great opera diva Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) lives as a recluse – only in the company of her butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and chef (Alba Rohrwacher) – in her Parisian apartment that looks like a fairy tale castle. The now 53 year old seems to have sunk in the opulence of her life’s work: heavy curtains separate her from the outside world, and her huge closet is reminiscent of a costume store. In the countless gala dresses and furs, Maria hides pills that she takes every day. The selfless staff convinces her to see a doctor: the diagnosis is dire. The rehearsals, marked by self-doubt, in which Maria tries to find her operatic voice again, do not bode well either. Her last stage appearance was years ago, and Callas allows herself to be carried away by a journalist's sensationalist film project.

The aging star escapes into her memories times and again – or are they visions, like Maria says? Hallucinations? Of course, the black and white flashbacks are an old film trick that shows all of Callas' traumas in fast forward. There is growing up in post-war poverty - first in New York and then without a father in Athens - which leads to Maria's first involuntary audiences. Soldiers pay her mother for a few hours with her beautiful first born – and her younger sister, Maria, who can sing so well. Later, Aristotle Onassis, then one of the richest men in the world, took Callas away from the big opera stages and plunged her into misfortune when he married the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy after their brief love affair.

And so the cycle closes: after first lady JACKIE and Princess Diana SPENCER, Pablo Larraín dedicates the last part of his diva trilogy to the peerless opera legend Maria Callas in the last days before her death in 1977. As befits the opera, pathos and melancholy play the main roles alongside Angelina Jolie.

Is all of this suffering the answer to the origin of great art? The interplay between Maria’s melancholy walks with the Eiffel Tower in the background and the bombastic performances doesn’t always work. The original recordings of Maria Callas’ opera singing remain overwhelming until the end, and cannot be fully captured by any of film diva Angelina Jolie’s grandest gestures.

Anna Hantelmann (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy