Maria: a breathless biopic despite Angelina Jolie (critic)
Pablo Larrain signs a deliberately deadly film on Callas with a very applied Angelina Jolie. Lack the essential: a breath of life.
The filmed biographies are more than they released souls, damaged by the paradoxical will to make them (re) live. Cinema trap that little assume. Milos Forman with his Amadeus On the striped rope between iconoclasm (the piercing and grotesque laughter of Mozart) and black mass (the fantasized confrontation of the prodigy with Salieri) had transcended by Transfiguration the Austrian monument once again become a fuel -frying and sassy crowded by its genius. None of this a priori at Pablo Larrain who has become the cantor of the chic biopic (Neruda,, Jackie,, Spectr…) that he investigates registered trademark. More or less compliant copies of a style which operates by floating capable of restoring a deadly subjectivity.
We remember Natalie Portman in a combative widow of Kennedy, withdrawn from the current history to better stage it (the presidential funeral). Death, there would therefore be that of real to touch the famous psyche. Here, Maria (Callas). Also, only the first name is enough to designate the subject. It all starts with the inevitable end, filmed the scene of theater located in a gigantic Parisian apartment. Larrain, by an advertising editing, continues the views of a Callas finally backed by a hotel of a Place Vendôme hotel waiting for the mark of a perfume to justify the pose. It is downright the death of the cinema is said to be. It is a bit, even if the rest will seek to grasp a truth that the too articulated story is struggling to touch. Angelina Jolie Perform nicely but sings in the void of a space without echoes. Diva speechless. Sad project.
From Pablo Larrain. With Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher … Duration 2h03. Release on February 5, 2025
