QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM VENICE

September 16th, 1977. Fifty-three-year-old Greek soprano Maria Callas lies lifeless on the floor of her magnificent Paris apartment, surrounded by police, her doting housemaid (Alba Rohrwacher), her loyal butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), and her two designer dogs. The rest of the movie takes places in the week preceding the untimely yet widely expected death. Maria had been living in near-complete isolation for four and a half years, since she last performed to a public audience. Her behaviour lapsed into delusion and insanity, with her doctor warning her that she was killing herself, and her two employees scrambling to avoid the inevitable.

Maria wants to sing again, yet her frail body – with a failing liver and heart – prevents her from reaching the high notes of yesterday. He strives for perfection, despite recognising that a touch of deviation is necessary for each and every song rendition. She dreads the sound of her own records because they reminded her of a not-so-distant, much happier past. She longs for the “exaltation” and the “intoxication” that singing injected into her soul. This is a woman torn between the desire to enrapture audiences and the fear of disappointing them. So she frequents the local cafes instead. She often doesn’t order anything. She simply sits there for the sake of her fans, she is there in order to be admired – she clarifies to a perplexed waiter.

Pablo Larrain’s final movie in the trilogy of of historical women – after 2017’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer, about Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy and Princess Diana respectively – is a 124-minute drama focused mostly on the broken woman just before the final curtain call. It provides fragmented snippets into her life in flashback format, in no chronological order. The outcome is a little disorderly. Those not familiar with Maria Callas’s life may struggle to follow the narrative and end up a little bored.

Maria reminisces about her majestic performances, the adoring crowds, as well as some of the most significant moments of her life. This includes her mother forcing her and her sister Yakinthi to sing in order to lift them out of poverty. She barely remembers her husband Giovanni Battista, a wealthy Italian industrialist, her memories instead focusing on the da she met Greek millionaire Aristotle “Ari” Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), the big love of her life. She refused to marry him, remaining his beloved “whatever” (instead of “wife”), while he tried to deny her the right to sing. There is a reference to the Venice Film Festival, where the film premiered and also where Ari allegedly first laid eyes on the primadonna. She met American president JKF several times, and quickly glanced at his wife Jackie. The woman who would eventually seize her her lover’s heart is played here by Valeria Golino (instead of Jackie‘s Natalie Portman): there is no intertextuality between the two films. Maria resents that she found out about their marriage in the newspaper. It wasn’t her feelings that were hurt, but instead her pride, she purports.

Maria does not set out to provide a full picture of its protagonist. Instead we end up with a relatively flat character. A depressed, annoying and capricious singer with a familiar predicament. Maria isn’t the only tragic white diva who died in their early 50s, upon realising that their romantic life was irreperably damaged, their careers had gone downhill, and money doesn’t buy happiness. Other notable examples include Dalida and Michael Jackson. That could have been a far more exciting trilogy, huh?

An indefatigably haughty Maria orders Ferruccio to move the piano from one corner of the room to the next, for no apparent reason. And she refuses to eat, instead forging ahead on a cocktail of tranquilisers and stimulants, particularly a hypnotic sedative called Mandrax. A hallucinatory interviewer and his cameraman accompany her on her imaginary trips down memory lane and also across the streets of the French capital. He shares his name with her favourite drug, in a sign that she is blissfully aware of her delusional frenzies.

Apart from its extended duration and slow, monotonous tone, Maria also suffers from another malaise: the lead actress is in a fierce battle with the character whom she portrays. Both Greek singer Maria Callas and American actress Angelina Jolie are bigger than life. In a way, it makes sense to cast a diva to play another one. The problem is that Jolie – indeed magnetic with her large pearly eyes and trembling fleshy lips – is just too jolly. Her beauty and her talent evoke joy even where pain is required. Perhaps for that reason the music numbers are not particularly moving (with an insistence on Bizet’s L’amour Est un Oiseau Rebelle). Despite seven alleged months of vocal training, she doesn’t sound like Callas at all. The Hellenic diva had a noticeably Greek accent, while Jolie sounds plain American. The fact that a Greek woman speaks English to her Greek sister and partner also contributes towards the sense of alienation between the actor and the character. And it might be slightly offensive to the late singer that they cast someone of the nationality of her foe – who not only “stole” her lover but also outlived her by nearly 20 years – to play the lead in her biopic.

Edward Lachman’s cinematography adds the elegant vintage touch required for a story of abundant wealth and scarce happiness. The memories of the past are presented in black-and-white, while the fateful final week is filmed in a sombre, vaguely sepia-tinted palette. A hovering camera travels across the chambers of her the sumptuous residence, offreing viewers a near-tactile experience (not too different to what DoP Stéphane Fontaine achieved in the White House corridors of Jackie). You can feel the walls and the furniture upon which Maria leaned on her final moments of desperation. A film that’s beautiful to touch and see. Just not a heart-wrenching viewing. If you’re looking for an experience laden with pain and suffering, just close your eyes and listen to Maria Callas on CD or Spotify instead.

Maria just premiered in the Official Competition of the 81st Venice International Film Festival.