Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Marcin Kukuczka When I got a chance to see the latest movie by Franco Zeffirelli, I actually thought about what can hold the name of a "tribute." Is it a well made biopic, an idealized image of a person or is it just a very personal interpretation of someone we once knew and have never forgotten...? The answer is difficult since each viewer has a different taste and expects something special. The last "definition," however, seems to fit most to this movie, CALLAS FOREVER, in which Franco Zeffirelli includes his own fantasy as well as some memories of the longstanding friendship with Maria Kalogeropoulou, the Diva better known to the world as Maria Callas (1923-1977).The action of the movie actually relates to some period of 1977, the last year of Maria Callas' life. In Paris, the city of the artists, arrives Larry Kelly (Jeremy Irons) who is to promote Bad Dreams, a punk band popular among youngsters. To his surprise, however, Larry will experience something that he would not expect in his most welcome dreams: a rebirth of Callas, a yet another glamor of her voice and the true splendor of her art (though pure fantasy, how interesting it is).But it is not the content that makes this movie subtle. It is, first of all, the exceptionally artistic interpretation of the individuality that Callas was. Although Maria, having got through the terrible concert in Japan, is no longer in the heyday of her career, she once again, for a brief last moment in her life, believes in her success and acts in the film adaptation of CARMEN, the opera she had not performed on stage. A great help for her and the real promoter is Larry Kelly who motivates her and raises belief in her, belief in the Maria Callas of long ago coming to life again. She appears to be rather a nervous star, yet constantly worried about honesty. She does not accept any cliché or imitation. She appears to dislike the present techniques and willingly comes back to the past memories. "Then, everything was honest" she says. There are lots of moments that provide us with a wonderful insight into her character. It is not only the Callas of stage, the great star but foremost a PERSON with memories, fears, difficulties of character but, besides all, with an exceptional sense of beauty and art. She never loses control over reality and when asked "What will you do?" replies "Don't ask questions I can't answer." But it is important to mention that there are no contradictions. Throughout the film, we experience one Callas, not Maria Kalogeropoulou vs Maria Callas, but a single magnificent individual.Besides, the performances are brilliant in the film. Fanny Ardant is superb in the lead expressing all kinds of feelings in her face. Here, we can admit that a real artist plays a real artist! From the very first moment which shows Callas desirous to be alone at home and interrupted by Larry to the very last moment which shows Callas walking, Ardant is brilliant! It's simply impossible to skip her, for instance, in the moment when she listens to her recorded voice and movingly sings with the tunes. Jeremy Irons also does a splendid job in his part as Larry Kelly but when applied to him, I far more prefer his scenes with Callas than other moments. Who can forget the memorable scene he says to Maria: "Trust me"... Joan Plowright, a mainstay of Zeffirelli's newest movies, is also terrific in the role of Sarah Keller. She supplies her performances with a unique charm.The music and the whole atmosphere is worth your attention while watching the movie since what would the whole film be without the moments in which we hear the magnificent, heavenly voice of Maria Callas? Real classic and sublime! However, there are also wonderful music pieces in the film music. I was most impressed by the final scene in the park with the subtle gentle music in the background. It is filled with unforgettable tunes, not that easy to be recognized at first but very beautiful and profound. I was moved to tears as Larry Kelly was.If I have any complaints to the movie, these are rather some doubts than complaints. I am not that certain if the director was right to pay so much attention to CARMEN. In a while, this may become quite boring, especially for people who want a movie, not an opera on screen. The plot of Larry Kelly - Michael and particularly their homosexual affair is also not that needed. But the character of Michael (Jay Rodan) also has something to offer. He constitutes an accurate representation of a young man who listens to Callas, admires her, gets into her visions through his art (pictures) even if these are the 1970s and the generation of entirely different music.CALLAS FOREVER, in short, is a very subtle film, a real tribute to the great star that Maria Callas was, not an indifferent, monotonous biopic but an interpretation, a wonderful fiction filled with emotions and heart. It's not a masterpiece, perhaps not the best Zeffirelli's movie, but it is truly a fine and a powerful trace that the artist (Zeffirelli) is bound to leave in modern cinema. Moreover, it is the work that really reminds us of the genius that Callas was, which makes it a real tribute. Franco Zeffirelli, you moved us to tears through a number of your subtle movies, stay with us with your interpretations, no matter if it is ROMEO AND JULIET or CALLAS FOREVER. Stay with us in that way. Cinema needs you.

Ed Uyeshima Gallic actress Fanny Ardant is an inspired choice to play Maria Callas, and with her uncanny physical and likely temperamental resemblance, she plays the legendary soprano with real brio and scenery-chewing style. I would not have expected anything less in such a fanciful telling of a what-if scenario that sprouted out of director Franco Zeffirelli's fertile imagination. Zeffirelli is no stranger to the extravagant and visually resplendent as he helmed the Burtons-at-play 1967 "The Taming of the Shrew" and the much-beloved, age-appropriate 1968 version of "Romeo and Juliet". His long-time professional relationship with Callas provides the basis for this fantasy where in 1977, she is drawn out of self-imposed exile and into the limelight one last time by a fictitious concert promoter, Larry Kelly, who had long ago decided to forego opera for the more lucrative world of punk rock. Sporting a silly ponytail, Jeremy Irons portrays Kelly as a predictably irascible character who mercurially worships and degrades her as the circumstance dictates, a variation on the character he would play in "Being Julia". This time, his character is gay, of course, probably to avoid any element of romance that would detract from Callas' obsession with preserving her legacy.Kelly's idea is to film her while acting out famous operatic roles on a sound stage and lip-synching the words, whereupon sound engineers would graft her recordings of some 22 years earlier onto the sound track. The series is to be called "Callas Forever" and starts with Bizet's "Carmen". After a rapid series of contrived scenes that resuscitate Callas from her Paris apartment seclusion back to international press attention, the film finally catches fire with the scenes that create the opera production itself. This is where Zeffirelli really shines as he makes Ardant look and act strikingly like Callas at her most passionate and charismatic. She is, of course, adored by her colleagues (in particular, an admiring young tenor playing Don Jose, as embodied by Gabriel Garko) and seems on the brink of a renaissance. Alas, it is the completion of this production that inspires Zeffirelli, along with co-writer Martin Sherman, to take the plot to the height of soap opera banality. Basking in her newly reborn confidence, Callas wants to take on Puccini's "Tosca" with her real voice, an idea supported blindly by Kelly but rejected by her backers. Instead of being crushed, she seems resigned to her legacy and insists that her "Carmen" be destroyed as she deems it a fraud.That she comes to this realization after the fact is one of the central conceits of the film since it implies she has been cavalier about the efforts around her who did believe in her, but I suppose that is what diva behavior is all about. After all, at the beginning, Callas is portrayed as a pill-popper who feels sorry for herself as a has-been, her voice shot during an infamous tour in Japan, and as the rejected paramour of Aristotle Onassis, who cast her aside to marry Jackie Kennedy. Throughout the movie, she is haunted by her former voice with ghostly visions of her stage triumphs. These kinds of excesses seem appropriate to this kind of tribute film, but it all feels so predictably over-the-top. Sadly, Joan Plowright stereotypically plays a music journalist as a wisecracking, truth-bearing confidante that Thelma Ritter would have played with greater aplomb in the fifties. There is a persistent clunkiness to Zeffirelli and Sherman's screenplay and an overall lack of subtlety that can only be blamed on Zeffirelli's heavily ornate, Baroque film-making style. The DVD is short on extras as there is no audio commentary track, but it does include a brief making-of featurette, additional interview excerpts with Zeffirelli and the principal players and several trailers including the one for the movie.

oliver-177 This is an odd movie, fairly opulent looking, yet barely released. A gay rock music promoter named Larry Kelly (I wonder if the REAL Larry Kelly, who started the Dallas Opera and worked with Callas, is still alive) is also a friend of recluse Maria Callas. He talks Callas into starring in a movie of Carmen, using her 13 year old recording as a soundtrack. She is difficult, but superb. The Carmen movie is a big success, but Maria feels uncomfortable with the concept and asks Larry to withdraw the film.Fanny Ardant is pretty good, but too variable. She swings from crotchety to alluring in a matter of seconds. You don't see much behind that beautiful mask. Anne Bancroft or Audrey Hepburn might have been better if the project had been done earlier and written better... Jeremy Irons is wince inducing: it is always unpleasant to watch an actor trying to make something out of nothing - the character of Larry is simply one-dimensional. Joan Plowright brings commonsense - a rare commodity in this film - to her few scenes.A few moments linger: Ardant, as Callas-Carmen, smoking a thin cigar before throwing her flower at José. Callas starting to seduce a hunky tenor, but thinking better of it after a little kiss.It is all very bizarre: outrageous Chanel product placement, saccharine gay subplot ( awww, the young boyfriend got a hearing aid so that he could hear Callas LPs), hideous punk rock music under the credits... and as others have remarked, the characters live in 1977, but the look is 2000.Basically yet another example of Zeffirellian effects without causes.

belcanto26 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.