Angelina Jolie in Pablo Larraín’s Callas biopic

In Jackie And SpencerPablo Larraín has stripped away every trace of starch from the historical biodrama to explore with penetrating intimacy famous women in moments of extreme emotional distress played out in the glare of a global spotlight. Intimacy is the key factor missing from the third installment of the gifted Chilean director’s unofficial trilogy, MariaStarring Angelina Jolie as the beloved opera singer Maria Callas during the last week of her life in Paris, the film is like a glittering jewel in a glass case, inviting you to look but not to touch.

That’s not to say it’s not engaging, or that Jolie’s technically precise interpretation isn’t impressive. But there’s a meta-clash here between a star whose celebrity has long eclipsed her acting chops, making it nearly impossible for her to slip into character, and a subject who’s constructed an imperious persona for herself, one that performs even when she’s not onstage.

Doubling icons adds a lot of weight to a role. It results less in a kinship between actor and character than in a double removal — an exercise in character study, a bit icy and distant, rather than a flesh-and-blood portrait.

The film is beautifully shot, of course, adorned with lush images by the great Ed Lachman. The cinematographer captures the City of Light in 1977 in soft autumnal tones that are strongly reminiscent of that period, switching to black-and-white or grainy color for Callas’s many retreats into memory. Lachman, who earned an Oscar nomination for his breathtaking chiaroscuro work in Larraín’s final feature, The Countshot Maria with a structured mix of 35mm, 16mm and Super 8mm, combined with vintage lenses.

The DP’s excellent work enhances the refined contributions of production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini. The latter’s stunning gowns include chic ensembles worn for public occasions and gorgeous costumes for Callas’s famous stage roles, some of which see the singer on fire as she unties herself from the past.

“I’m in the mood for admiration,” Callas tells a waiter in Paris when he suggests that she might feel more comfortable indoors than at a table in an outdoor café. “I come to restaurants to be adored.”

Larraín and screenwriter Steven Knight, who previously Spencersatisfy, to a point. Their film is an act of mournful adoration for a diva who seems almost too arrogant, too cloaked in affectation, to be seen as vulnerable human beings — even as her body breaks down and she’s plagued by voice insecurities as she plans to sing again, more than four years after her last performance. It often feels as if the filmmakers are examining Callas through the disorienting effect of a magnifying glass.

The balance seems off, as you find yourself more sympathetic to the loyal household staff who love and protect her than to the woman lying dead on the carpet by the grand piano. That image opens the film, preceded only by a slow pan around Callas’s stately apartment.

Knight uses the mundane setting of an interview, with a TV arts reporter and cameraman coming to Maria’s house. The reporter’s name, Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee in a thankless role), is a clue that he is a product of Maria’s mind, since it is also the name of the drug she is most dependent on – more commonly sold in the US as Quaaludes

In what seems like a ritual that has been going on for some time, Maria’s hypervigilant butler, Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), takes the pills from her dressing table and later from the handbags and coat pockets where she has hidden handfuls of them around the room. She has also stopped eating for days, feeding her poodles meals prepared by her housekeeper, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher).

She becomes irritated by her doctor’s (Vincent Macaigne) dire warnings that her heart and liver are completely destroyed and that the stress of the performance, plus the drugs she would need to survive, could prove fatal.

The dominant thread becomes not that grim final week, punctuated by failed rehearsals with a mild-mannered, cajoling accompanist (Stephen Ashfield), but the singer’s mental excursions into her past, from her unhappy childhood with an exploitative mother (Lydia Koniordou) to her love affair with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), whose aggressive charms immediately sidelined her husband. Given that the Greek shipping magnate eventually left her for Jackie Kennedy, there’s a satisfying coming full circle with the subject of Larraín’s first film in the trilogy. But don’t expect a cameo from Jackie star Natalie Portman.

Maria’s memoirs, moreover, are filled with her triumphs at the world’s most prestigious opera houses—Covent Garden, the Met, La Scala—which flood the film with glorious music. The naked emotionality and piercing tragedy of the immortal operatic heroines are well-suited to Callas’s end-of-life narrative and provide a useful counterbalance to her studied demeanor and detachment in this interpretation. The power of the work of Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti, Catalani, and Cherubini goes a long way toward providing the pathos that often seems muted by Larraín’s approach.

Passages from some of the most celebrated classical operas effectively replace the role of a score. The film’s soul-stirring choice of musical bookends begins with Desdemona’s supplicatory prayer, “Ave Maria,” from Otelloand concludes with “Vissi d’Arte” by Toscain which a woman who lived for art and love finds herself abandoned by God. Opera lovers will find much to savor here when the film hits Netflix on a yet-to-be-announced date.

It is commendable that Jolie underwent more than six months of rigorous vocal training for the role, working on breathing and posture, as well as details such as accent. The singing we hear in Maria is a synthesized mix of star and subject. Arias from her best years are mostly Callas recordings, but her voice in the 1977 scenes, older and rustier after years of vocal strain and a long absence from the stage, mixes in a significant amount of Jolie. Neither lip-syncing nor karaoke, it’s a more complicated hybrid.

A number of striking moments use music to show how memory and fantasy seep into Callas’s diminishing grip on reality. For example, Maria walks through the city with the Eiffel Tower in the background, mentally directing a crowd of ordinary Parisians singing the “Anvil Chorus” from The Trovatore; or a full orchestra on the steps of one of the French capital’s great historic buildings, playing in the rain as a crowd of costumed geishas perform the “Humming Chorus” Mrs ButterflyThat unspeakably moving passage of music, depicting Butterfly’s calm vigilance as she awaits Pinkerton’s return, adds emotional charge to the tragedy lurking in Maria’s life.

Conflict arises when a music reporter for The Figaro pulls a dirty trick and then confronts Maria outside the rehearsal room with the notion that her voice is irreparably damaged. But Knight’s script doesn’t capitalize on this as a moment of self-condemnation, instead limiting the scene to a disturbing invasion of privacy.

The film aims to portray a celebrated woman, whose life is as much about sacrifice as reward, trying to take control, to look back and see the truth as death approaches. But the moments of enlightenment are hazy. There’s little that comes close to the compassion and insight that Larraín brought to his portrayals of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, even though it’s a far cry from those films.

The tenderness of a scene in which Maria’s sister (Valeria Golino) urges her to leave her troubled childhood behind (“Close the door, little sister”) inadvertently underscores how few opportunities we get to be on similarly intimate terms with the protagonist.

The most heartbreaking moment for me actually came near the end, when the film flashed back to the day Callas died of a heart attack at the age of just 53. A high-pitched scream that at first sounds like a strangled note from an aria turns out to be one of her poodles. The dog’s scream of anguish morphs into a loud outpouring of suppressed grief from Ferruccio and Bruna (Favino and Rohrwacher are both wonderful) as they hold hands for comfort.

Still, Maria is a much more daring and unconventional take on the final chapter of the legendary soprano’s life than Franco Zeffirelli’s standard 2002 biopic, Callas Foreverstarring Fanny Ardant. And Larraín’s film becomes more poignant in retrospect when the beautiful archive footage of Callas above the credits, full of vitality at the height of her career, broadens the perspective on her sad, accelerated decline.