Really Surprised!

Good concept, poorly executed.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Marie Callas (Fanny Ardant 53) is persuaded by a music promoter (Jeremy Irons 52) to make a career comeback in a movie of Carmen where she lip syncs to her old (good) recordings. She has to do this because she has lost her quality voice. This is all fiction and was supposed to take place in 1977 shortly before she died. It's purpose is to do a character study of Callas. It is supposed to show her flinty inner integrity and diva mannerisms. Also the funk her life assumed after Jackie stole Onassis from her (that makes me laugh).It may have captured her personality somewhat but the fawning awe of every actor and extra in every scene was too much to bear. It was like an idiotic made for TV special.I expected something better. Zeffirelli 80 must have been losing it when he made this.All the male actors except maybe Irons and his side kick look like Fashion House models = weird too made up and distorted--as queenie gays are wont to be.Avoid this idiotic fluff.Zeffirelli is openly gay, funny because I didn't know this while watching the movie (had never heard of him) but thought this thing looks like it was made by flaming queen. Also from a different generation when most out of the closet gays were of this coloring. Fortunately today this is not the case.DO NOT RECOMMEND

I'm talking about the negative reviewers here. I can only suppose it's a case of "Hell has no fury...". This is a terrific movie. In some ways this is the quintessence of art - a beautifully formed fantasy designed to reveal a hidden aspect of its subject. Quite why it's so divisive I don't know. Zeffireli is a genuine artist. He doesn't always get it right but this time the elements are all there - a subject he cares passionately for, a wonderfully whimsical conceit and the perfect conduit in Fanny Ardant. The result is as good an insight into an artist's soul as I've seen and a deeply moving and memorable film. Fanny Ardat is a French national treasure. France has at least a dozen brilliant actresses and Ardant is one of them but she's not often given such a meaty role. Here, her performance made me think at times of Falconetti. It's that good. The supporting players are, with one exception, fine and do what's needed. It's Ardant's show. The exception is Joan Plowright. She plays her journalist as a cuddly Miss Marple type and it just doesn't work. It's bad casting and I imagine that Zeffirelli had a personal reason for giving her the role. Joking aside, the negative reviews are very hard to understand. Skimpy budget shows? Not at all. It looks great thanks to Zeffirelli's eye for composition and design. Choppy and disconnected? I watched the 108 minute cut and wouldn't have changed a single edit. To file this film under "gay interest" or "for fans of opera only" is to miss the point. This is a thoroughly entertaining and enlightening film about an extraordinary artist, anchored by an extraordinary central performance.

This is one of the loveliest European films I've seen in ages. It is an adoring tribute to Maria Callas by her longtime friend, Franco Zeffirelli, whose friendship with the spectacular opera diva of the 1950s had spanned 25 years.The conceit of the screenplay, conceived by Mr. Zeffirelli, is for Ms. Callas's fictional former concert manager to approach her with an idea to revitalize her flagged career and spirits. It is 1977, near the end of her life, and she is living as a recluse in her lavish Paris apartment, whiling away her days playing cards with the servants, drinking and popping pills, listening to her old recordings, and lamenting the loss of her voice and her precious Ari Onassis, who had died two years earlier (though of course she had lost him much earlier, when he married Jackie Kennedy in 1968, something she never got over).The manager's idea is for her to create a series of films in which she employs her still marvelous beauty and dramatic skills to enact her famous operatic performances, all the while lip-synching to recordings made years earlier when her voice was in its prime. She is reluctant, feels it is artistically fraudulent to use technology to simulate a performance, and, beneath this rationale, she is also frightened to return to the spotlight created by any sort of new venture.Finally she agrees to do "Carmen," the one major role that she had recorded but never performed on stage (apparently this is true). But in the end, after the film is shot, Callas reverts to her earlier view and demands that the manager promise never to distribute the "Carmen" film.The elegant French actress, Fanny Ardant, stars as Ms. Callas, reprising a role she had performed on stage in Paris in Roman Polanski's much praised adaptation of "Master Class" in 1997. It is said that Ms. Ardant looks strikingly similar to Ms. Callas. Jeremy Irons plays the role of her former manager, Larry Kelly, a personable gay man who is sincerely devoted to Ms. Callas. There are romantic subtexts – Kelly and a gay young artist (Jay Rodan), Callas and the gorgeous young tenor (Gabriel Garko) who plays opposite her in the Carmen film-within-a-film. Joan Plowright plays a good humored journalist, an old acquaintance of the principals.But the joy of this film is watching the performances of both Ms. Ardant and Mr. Irons, photographed often in close-ups that capture the exquisite "facial acting" – to use Stanley Kauffmann's term – of which both are so wonderfully capable. These players are sensational when separate and especially in scenes when they appear together. I have rarely seen Jeremy Irons show such a light, nimble sensibility, setting aside his more typical tendency toward melancholy. The photography and mise en scene are as lovely as Ms. Ardant. Especially wondrous are scenes showing Callas's apartment and, even more so, the scenes from "Carmen" (the exterior scenes were shot on location in Spain).Throughout, of course, we are treated to Ms. Callas's arresting coloratura soprano in recorded performances of various arias from among those for which she was famous. Ms. Ardant's performance more than rises to the passionate requirements for her various scenes as Carmen. These are truly thrilling. This film has had extremely poor distribution, in Europe and North America. That is unfortunate, for it is an aesthetic treat the likes of which are all too rare. (In French, Italian and – mainly – English). My rating: 8/10 (B+). (Seen on 03/13/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.

Maria Callas was an artist of such magnitude that it seems impossible for any filmed biography to do her justice. Besides, who could really play Maria Callas? Well, the actress featured here does as well as anyone else could, which is, I guess, adequate. Of much greater importance is the banality of the story. I can't imagine Maria Callas in the 1970's even considering doing what the film suggests. By 1965, it was painfully obvious that Callas, despite her glamorous image and appearance, could never, even at age 41, have reconstructed her once fabulous voice, a voice which in its prime could accomplish miracles. In any case, it is folly to suggest that Callas would have elected to do a film version of "Carmen" ( a role she never cared for) with a dubbed recording she had made years earlier. I could see "Norma", "Tosca" or "Traviata", but never "Carmen". Larry Kelly actually died several years before Callas, so his presence here is pure fiction ------- which is what the film actually is. As a way to pass 108 minutes, the film is adequate, but if you're looking for a documentation of Maria Callas in her final years, you will have to keep looking. I doubt whether you will ever find what you are looking for because it seems highly unlikely that the real Callas, ever the elusive firefly, will ever be captured and preserved.