maria / angelina

Why am I so put off by the idea of watching Angelina Jolie play Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain’s new ‘sumptuous’ bio-pic, Maria?

It’s strange, because I find Jolie mesmerizing. She strikes me as being a genuine weirdo – which I totally relate to : a unique actress – who else could have played the psycho-slippery female version of Cuckoo’s -Nest-Jack Nicholson in ‘Girl, Interrupted’, for which she won the Oscar for best supporting actress? This was a character whose IQ was so through the roof she essentially no longer knew how to exist. It was over-acting – if you want to look at it that way – but the ingestible craziness ate the screen. She was incredible in Gia, where she played a drug-addicted model. I like her in action films like Salt, and especially in the hyper-violent Wanted, which she nailed. She was very good in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, even if the spotlight was stolen from her rather ruinously by her own lipstick (in a sepia film, yes her lips are to die for I realize, and I do love red lipstick – but mamma mia, ‘Chanel, sorry Guerlain Rouge A Levres’ should have been credited as the co-star). Her directing, in my opinion, is underrated – both Unbreakable, about Japanese atrocities in World War II, and First They Killed My Father, about the horrors committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, were solid, earnest, affecting, if occasionally heavy-handed films, even if her disastrous self-directed ‘divorce drama’ starring her very self and her ex-husband and now sworn enemy, Brad Pitt was literally unwatchable (when Brad starts ‘speaking French’……..my goodness…… )

I also respect and like Chilean director Pablo Larrain. Maria is the third film in his trilogy of Famous But Rather Troubled Twentieth Century Women – my subtitle, not his – the others being Jackie, where the divine Natalie Portman did a pretty good job of inhabiting the supposedly icy Onassis in the post Kennedy shooting era – the blood-soaked shirt was unforgettable, but the fact that I liked it didn’t surprise me; as most Black Narcissi know rather too well, I am now, and will forever, be obsessed with Ms Portman because of her role as Nina Sayers in the magnificent Black Swan, my piece on which is probably the most emotional and torrid you will ever get from me. I can’t see a picture of her now, even in some standardized pink Dior poster, without getting a micro-pang in the heart and stomach.

What surprised me far more was how much I loved Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in the second part of the trilogy, ‘Spencer’. I find that Kristen’s overly-self-conscious lip-biting and general twitchery to denote ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ can sometimes work against her – she was atrocious in David Cronenberg’s Crimes Of The Future, like an AI android programmed to act like Kristen Stewart (or perhaps that was the entire point, and I missed it?). I thought the nervous energy she always brings to the table was just right in Personal Shopper, a ghost story about a fashion assistant flitting between London and Paris and a film I adore; and though I didn’t believe for a second that she was Jean Seberg, she looked so utterly beautiful in that film with her blonde crop and cut off tops – and it was so well crafted as a whole- that I didn’t remotely care.

But Princess Di? I suppose we Brits have a thing about others doing bad posh English accents. Some have still not got over Dick Van Dyke’s cockney in Mary Poppins – though it’s now obviously a one of a kind classic (and me and D often sing it at karaoke).. And Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, whose astonishingly absymal mauling of an upper class English voice is indescribable……………… comes full circle, in the end, and suits the high campery of the entire proceedings (oh my god, Lucy writhing in the garden…..) Eventually you wouldn’t want it any other way. In general, though, perhaps because I am an English teacher, I am overly sensitive to these things. A bad accent usually means a bad film for me. Some can nail it perfectly; Emma Stone can for sure; she was Britisher than British in Poor Things and The Favourite; I think Julianne Moore is pretty good; I love Nicole Kidman but I often think there is an Australian undertone to whatever accent she is trying out, whether American or British – her lurching into proper Aussie in the otherwise brilliant Portrait Of A Lady by Jane Campion really took you out of the action in what was otherwise an exquisitely overwrought film; one moment you thought you were in eighteenth century London, then you suddenly found yourself in Crocodile Dundee. Gillian Anderson can obviously do both because she is both British and American – although D walked in one day while I was watching The Crown – a series I thought was superlative in the extreme but which he couldn’t abide – we do have our differences; I can do more mainstream than he can – and he stood open mouthed, flabbergasted by the horrendousness of Anderson’s wheezing, sidewalking hairsprayed crustacean impression ofThatcher which had us both collapsing into hysterics (and for which she obviously won a lot of prestigious awards…I am usually out of sync with what ‘Academies’ etc considers to be good acting). The opposite is obviously also true with American accents, of course. You can’t take the Hermione out of Emma Watson. Michael Caine has never even tried. My hairs stand on end every time I see a Brit – particularly Daniel Craig – who I like otherwise attempt to do a classic Southern Drawl – but you know better than me so do tell me otherwise..

Anyway. I couldn’t for a second imagine Kristen Stewart, she who was so perfect as a moody, and very American teenager in the Twilight Series, madly in love with a blood-addicted but deliberately appetite suppressing vampire Robert Pattison – becoming British royalty. And my mother’s shackles were definitely raised to cushion-chewing levels one night, brother and father gone to bed, as we turned down the lights, opened up another bottle of red, while my sister, D and I settled down on the sofa one evening to watch the Diana bio-pic at my parent’s house. I love cinematic debates – it fascinates me how easily opinions differ, even with close friends whose taste is so often similar to yours; my friend Peter and I often sit agog at the other’s praises and dismissals; He liked The House Of Gucci; D and I both thought it was beyond dreadful – Gaga’s accent, porca miseria, D even slunk off to bed rather than continue the sufferance of watching it – which is quite an extreme blip of politeness for him but I suppose his taste membranes had just been too ingloriously busted; I myself eventually got into some of the bald-headed gilded ridiculousness of it all by the end (but really, just give the Sopranos or Godfather). Strangely, M3GAN, the camp as Christmas horror movie – my entire favourite of last year, but which Peter didn’t especially adhere to, whereas I saw it twice in the cinema – was an 80% family success; it thoroughly hooked in my dad, who loved the intricacies of the narrative and immediately declared he wanted to see it again; my brother, who was roaring thumping the armchair in approval several times, and my sister, who was shrieking in uninhibited delight with me and D all cackling in delirium and who later declared she was going to order a Megan poster for her house the next day. (Mum thought it was stupid, which it kind of is.)

But I digress! A few tassles were chewed during ‘Spencer’, and I think she reached its conclusion – but I can’t be sure. D, my sister Deborah, and I were somewhat transported by it, though. Stewart nailed the essence. The whole was so fragile and beautiful. The score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood made it even better. And what I love about Larrain’s films is the subversion of the usual ultrapredictable character arc: the overexposition and beginning, the problem to be resolved and then the conclusion, all the principles of basic screenwriting which in truth have never interested me past about the age of three. I don’t NEED that. I just want to be SUSPENDED in something, to lose myself in a different time and place. And boy were we suspended. I could feel the physical and emotional coldness of The Palace as they all ‘holidayed’ up in Scotland, freezing Diana out. She felt convincingly, and tragically, alone. She captured that. You were in the mid-beginnings of her downward spiral. ‘Atmospheric’ doesn’t begin to hint at how full the film is with re-memorable period ambience- to me every detail, perfect; even the slightly off kilter fish eye lens of a South American director putting his own spin on things so classically British made it all feel slightly odd; renewed, and therefore more real, when so many period dramas, to me, just feel like a trip to the taxidermist’s. When Diana just can’t take any more of the stuffiness of The Firm, and recklessly drives her two young sons to a fast food restaurant to a backdrop of Mike And The Mechanics’ All I Need Is A Miracle – I was in heaven; it was so heartlifting and beautiful, despite the awful tragedy you know is going to happen not so far into the future…..

Yes, Larrain likes his tragic divas and socialites. All of whom had fine taste in scent, by the way. Jackie liked the sophisticatedly dirty – Bal A Versailles, Jicky; Joy, 1000 – I love the idea of her crêping past the crowds coolly and defiantly in the original Patou 1000 extrait – so alluring, so dignified, so superb in every respect; Krigler Patchouli – apparently a very straight up but deep New York patchouli I have never experienced but can imagine being adeptly prickly yet warm; and Jil Sander 4, a rich, spicy, early nineties number when she wanted to funk things up; on the days she wanted to be more aerated and floral, she allegedly wore Fleurissimo, but so, probably, did Queen Nefertiti, seeing that the house of Creed was launched roughly around the year 1365 BC.

Diana, true to the demure image she gave off – I forgot to say, sorry Kristen, you were great, but have you seen Australian Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in the last series of the Crown? She was taller than Di was – ok, shave her shins off! – but the acting, the accent, my god, how could someone do it THAT perfectly? – her whole dememenour was off the charts jaw-droppingly good, in a way that you felt you were actually watching Diana, rather than an impressionistic ‘capturing’; no, I was saying , sorry, re Diana’s butter wouldn’t melt initial aura, that she also went intentionally for the publically demure in her scenting, favouring Penhaligons’ Bluebell for daywear, which Thatcher also wore, presumably plagiarizing the-then-queen-to-be’s scent in an attempt to give her a whiff of humanity; she also wore Houbigant’s Quelque Fleurs, which is a pretty little number, and for warmer moments Hermès Faubourg 24, which my mum wears and gets complimented on, as well as the devastatingly lovely Van Cleef & Arpels’s First – her actual signature.

Perfume-wise, Callas went somewhere in between, classic and sophisticated, but favouring the rose/jasmine/sandalwood safe comfort zone of Chanel No 5 – can’t go wrong with that – and the cooler, but similar- Detchema De Revillon (ditto). Intriguingly, she is also said to have used Luchino Visconti’s favourite perfume, Hammam Bouquet, quite a dirty, androgynously powder pressed – a definite hint of perspiration – rose, iris and sandalwood perfume; it has its angelic aspects, but the fact that it was based on the Turkish Baths at Jermyn Street tells us quite a lot about its probable, far more sensual, origins. Maria Callas, once her eyesight was failing, would apparently leave Hammam-Drenched handkerchiefs on the stage, in the precise places she needed to be during that night’s opera, led to her arias by her perfume.

I am presuming that both Pablo Larrain, and Angelina Jolie, have tried dousing up the props and the curtains with Hammam Bouquet to give some veritas to the proceedings of Maria ; the trailers I have seen leave me deeply stiffening and cringeing (as do the pictures I have put up above; to me she just feels instinctively, disastrously not the girl.) I just can’t place Callas and Jolie together, at all. But at the same time, I am not Pablo Larrain, who is an aesthetic virtuoso, and I do like to be proven wrong; the first two films took a little getting used to before I could try to sink into their luxuriant textures, so perhaps this one will do too – if I don’t choke to death in horror on my popcorn; part of me is definitely intrigued by how all of this indulgence and majesticity pans out on screen (things take longer to get on Netflix and in cinemas than they do wherever you are) so I would love to hear your personal insights on any of the points shared above if you have already seen it and to hear that I am mistaken. Is it good? Is it terrible? Just middling? What’s your take? If you are not a cinephile, then let’s talk about the divas’ scents instead, or insights into their lives. But if any of you were in raptures watching ‘Maria’ and recommend it in any shape or form – even the apartments in Paris, etc, the mood, because I can be easily swayed by convincing and instinctual, not prissy – and particularly CGI – production design – we saw Gladiator II at the cinema on my birthday and it was as persuasive as a giant set of lego; like Angelina Jolie, who was apparently terrified to the core of taking on a singing role, and this part specificially, but took it anyway because of her fear, I just might take the plunge.