Larraín's third portrait of a 20th-century female icon feels more limited than "Jackie" or "Spencer," because it is more determined by fate.

By Owen Gleiberman

“Maria,” Pablo Larraín’s drama about the legendary American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas, opens on the day of her death, September 16, 1977. Thin as a ghost, dressed in a white nightgown, she has collapsed on the living room floor of her very large Paris apartment. The film then flashes back to a week earlier; most of it is set in that week (though it is peppered with important episodes in Callas’ life). So we know exactly where this is going. But we don’t just know where it’s going because the film is set in that fateful final week. We know because the story of “Maria” is one of a neurotic death spiral.

The apartment, with its chandeliers hanging from high ceilings, its wood-paneled walls and large old canvases, and the most luxurious bed I’ve ever seen in a movie, is beautiful enough to suggest the court of an 18th-century French royal. This is Larraín’s third interior portrait of an iconic 20th-century female figure, following “Jackie” (about Jacqueline Kennedy) and “Spencer” (about Princess Diana). In all three, the residences are significant, elaborate sets that function as gilded cages. Jackie Kennedy lived in the White House, of course. “Spencer” was set on Queen Elizabeth’s estate. But while the Maria Callas we see lives a life of luxury, her apartment, much more than the homes in the other films, feels like a prison of her own making.