The third in Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy of troubled celebrity / ‘difficult woman’ biopics (after Jackie in 2016 and Spencer in 2021), Maria begins as it ends with medics gathered around the body of the opera diva Maria Callas.

We’re in a sumptuous Paris apartment. It’s September 1977, and Callas (played here by Angelina Jolie) has finally succumbed to a heart condition exacerbated by her reliance on sedatives.

From there, screenwriter Stephen Knight flashes back into the last weeks of her life, a period in which Callas seems bent on emerging from her seclusion and the protective envelope provided by her devoted, exasperated manservant Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and her cook and housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher).

A journalist called Mandrax (played by Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee) is keen to have her tell her side of what was already a well-told story. An English voice coach and pianist, Ronald (Paul Spera), has scheduled regular meetings in an empty concert hall to see what voice – if any – the great Diva has left. We already know it isn’t much: we’ve heard her singing in the kitchen. “Magnificent,” says Bruna, with a lack of enthusiasm to which only Callas...