
Stylish Films: Maria (2025)
Maria is a film telling the story of the last week in the life of the ultimate opera diva Maria Callas. Living in Paris, Maria is a living legend, but one that has lost her health, her voice, and the love of her life, Aristotle Onassis. Now she lives in a world that is fogged by ghosts and hallucinations brought on by her reliance on Mandrex and other pills, pills that allow her to believe that she is being interviewed for a documentary about her life (by a reporter called Mandrex no less) as it draws to a premature end. We start the film on September 16th 1977, the day she died at the age of 53, and then see the week leading to her death, along with flashbacks to her triumphs and heartbreaks from her life.
Maria is a stunning film, a sad elegy from director Pablo LarraÃn of one of the most famous women of the 20th Century. It is the final part of his trilogy that also includes Natalie Portman in Jackie, and Kristen Stewart in Spencer, tragic, compelling women with lives filled with incredible highs and terrible lows. At the heart of Maria is an incredible central performance by Angelina Jolie, a woman who seems to get more beautiful as she gets older, and infuses Maria with a beauty and sensuality, and yet also fragility. Even when Maria is getting her long suffering Butler/valet Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) to once again move the piano, you never stop hoping that her story will have a different end, that somehow she will rediscover her voice.
The film is utterly beautiful in its staging. Paris in the Autumn has never looked so wonderful, with the golden fallen leaves and pale blue skies giving the film a hazy look that works so well for the story. Maria’s apartment is stunning, even though it is turning into a beautiful mausoleum that Maria escapes with her almost constant walking of the Paris streets. Then there are the incredible costumes, including those from ‘La Callas’ most famous operas, many of which she burns in the opening scenes. Maria herself is the epitome of chic, particularly in platform heels, slightly flared trousers and oversized glasses like the ones worn by her nemisis Jackie Kennedy. In the flashback scenes, she looks like the ultimate goddess, but we are also reminded that, before the weight loss, there was a pretty, plump girl with the voice of an angel.
Maria is a strange film, Mandrex, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, is almost like an angel of death, and is, of course, in love with her, even though he doesn’t exist. There is also a wonderful cameo with Valeria Golino as her concerned, sister Yakinthi, who wants her to forget the past and get on with living now, without Onassis, without opera, and without her demons. This, of course, never happened, but Maria does get a last triumphant moment at her end, as she rediscovers her voice and gives one, final, beautiful performance with her windows wide open for Paris to enjoy.
Highly recommended.

