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This Is Not Angelina Jolie’s Big Comeback
Her starring role in Maria is her most ambitious in ages, and yet it doesn’t feel like a reemergence. It feels like a snooze.
Its Maria, living in Paris toward the end of her life, hasn’t sung onstage in years but still can’t stop performing — whether it’s burbling an aria in the kitchen for her housekeeper, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), or playing the diva for a TV journalist (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who’s actually a pill-induced hallucination. She’s definitely meant to be a mess, teetering out of the grasp of her doting domestic help, causing scenes at cafés, and imagining an interview with Smit-McPhee, who shares a name with her preferred brand of downers, when she isn’t trying to rediscover her voice with the help of a pianist (Stephen Ashfield) who might also be a figment. Maria looks incredible, too, with cinematographer Edward Lachman giving ’70s Paris the exact look of a vintage postcard, and Larraín staging flights of fantasy that involve choirs turning up out of the crowds on the Place du Trocadero and orchestras sitting on the steps in the rain.
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