Angelina Jolie is convincing but this Maria Callas biopic will leave you cold

Larrain has taken great care over the opera scenes, requiring Jolie to take singing lessons and sing, rather than mime, during the shoot. Callas’s voice was then laid over hers in the editing to powerful effect.

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Callas is just 54, but she cuts a lonely figure in these final weeks. Onassis has been dead for two years and three years have passed since her farewell tour, yet one of the few people she sees is a friend and former conductor who is working with her in a doomed attempt to bring her voice back to the point where she can sing in public again.

Her closest relationships are with Ferruccio, who dares to be candid, while Bruna expresses her feelings wordlessly. She may tell her she’s in good voice, but her refusal to stop what she’s doing to listen properly says it all.

These sequences are tenderly played in an exquisitely realised film, but it’s relentlessly downbeat and frustratingly slow. The flashbacks are tantalising, doled out so sparingly they inevitably leave you wanting more. Callas had a big life, and maybe it has been picked over many times in print and on film, but this stripped-down version left me feeling short-changed.