Maria Reviews: What Critics Are Saying About Angelina Jolie's Transformation and Singing as the Opera Diva

Early reactions to Angelina Jolie’s latest movie are signaling the superstar’s triumphant return to the big screen.

Maria, director Pablo Larraín’s new biopic about opera singer Maria Callas, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival on Thursday, Aug. 29.

Deadline film critic Stephanie Bunbury described Jolie, 49, as "an almost magical match for the real diva," in a review of the film.

"The actor’s commitment to this creation is obvious at every turn," she wrote. "Knowing that Callas was only happy when on stage, she learned to sing for the role; the voice we hear is a blend of Callas and Jolie’s own. Even more importantly, we can see her chest rise and veins swell as she is consumed, body and soul, by the physical and emotional effort of singing."

The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey praised Jolie's performance in a review: "It’s a career-defining bit of synchronicity, bolstered by one of Jolie’s very best performances. Her work has always been about that immaculate sense of control over posture and tone."

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Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote that Jolie "seizes our attention, playing Maria as woman of wiles who is imperious, mysterious, fusing the life force of a genius diva with the downbeat emotional fire of a femme fatale," in the movie, while expressing some issues with the film as a whole.

"Jolie, for the first time in years, reminds you that she can be a deadly serious actor of commanding subtlety and power," Gleiberman added.

Writing for the film and television website Little White Lies, Hannah Strong asserted that Jolie has "found the role of a lifetime" in a similar manner to Natalie Portman's portrayal of Jackie Kennedy in Larraín's 2016 film Jackie.

"It’s quite something to watch a woman as instantly recognizable as Jolie be so bewitching while playing someone else incredibly famous (always a challenge in biopics where footage of the subject exists) and without the layers of prosthetics that actors normally rely on to 'transform,' " she wrote. "Yet Jolie achieves such with a refined purr of a European accent and something equally feile in her gait."

Fionnuala Halligan wrote for Screen Daily that the movie exceeds with "a sense of elusiveness and the unexpected even within its familiar structure," adding, "Larrain leans into Jolie’s aimlessness as she wanders around Paris by creating scenes and memories that take place only in her mind, and adding orchestras which spring to life across the city to usher in ’Madame Butterfly’, for example, in the rain."

Maria, written by Steven Knight, is the latest in a string of biographical films from director Larraín, 48. His previous Spencer and Jackie featured Oscar-nominated performances from Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana and Portman as the former first lady, respectively. 

"I take very seriously the responsibility to Maria's life and legacy. I will give all I can to meet the challenge," Jolie said in a statement when the project was announced in 2022. Callas, who became an international sensation thanks to her three-octave vocal range, died in Paris in 1977 of a heart attack, according to The Guardian.

Maria, also set to screen at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend, does not yet have a release date; Netflix purchased the film's distribution rights.