‘Moria’ Netflix Review: A Campy, Cosmic Portrait of an Argentine Icon

Perhaps the hardest part of building a biographical series around someone as singular as Moria Casán—a towering Argentine show business figure—lies in finding the right tone: a way of translating that iconic presence and outsized personality into fiction without flattening it. Moria more than rises to that challenge. The Netflix miniseries, created by Javier Van de Couter, starts from a bold conceptual premise: to tell her life as if it unfolded inside a kind of “snow globe”—an imagined territory hovering somewhere between reality and fantasy. In it, Moria herself becomes a puppet master, manipulating sets like an extraterrestrial DJ with total control over her own narrative. That intergalactic vessel that is Moria—and also the series—proves to be the ideal framing device for much of her story.

Camp, kitsch, and trash aesthetics—filtered through touches of Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar, Federico Fellini, a splash of John Waters, and a strong queer sensibility—form the stylistic backbone of this tale. It also connects to Van de Couter’s previous work, particularly Tesis sobre una domesticación, sharing its blend of sexual intensity and a constant party/celebration/melodrama dynamic. Even within Netflix’s relatively conventional framework, Moria is strikingly bold. It adopts a clear point of view—not so much the mass-market TV diva, but rather a cult figure embraced by queer and marginal communities—and commits to it fully. It’s a smart decision. A more conventional biopic would have gotten bogged down in mimicry, physical resemblance, chronological box-ticking, and other realism-driven minutiae. None of that matters here—except insofar as it serves the internal logic of this heightened fantasy.

The series presents Moria as the literal puppeteer of her own story, staged almost entirely on constructed sets (there’s very little public space, with period evocation conveyed through production design, makeup, and costumes). Attempts to anchor the story in Argentina’s sociopolitical reality—such as a brief episode set during the military dictatorship—feel somewhat out of place. That’s because this isn’t that kind of portrait. Instead, the aim is to convey the complex reality of a figure who is larger than life in every sense: human, physical, and symbolic. Moria has been many things—showgirl, dancer, actress, TV host, media personality—and above all a fiercely intelligent and audacious woman who effectively created herself. At the height of her fame, she also chose to align herself with outsiders and marginalized communities, people living along the porous edges of society.

The series opens strongly, with Moria played by Sofía Gala Castiglione—her real-life daughter—who captures her mother’s gestures, rhythms, and expressions with uncanny precision. It’s not imitation so much as transmutation, layered with a certain voyeuristic charge: Sofía is asked to embody her own mother in scenes that are often intense, not only sexually but emotionally, in ways that might fascinate any therapist. These early episodes (the first three, and the strongest) trace Moria’s accidental beginnings in show business and her rapid immersion into a world of performances, parties, and work, while also dealing with men’s inability to handle such an independent, self-assured woman. They cover her rise to fame, her film appearances alongside major Argentine comedy stars, her transition to television with shows like Monumental Moria and A la cama con Moria, her marriage to Mario Castiglione (Marco Antonio Caponi), and the purchase of a country house in Parque Leloir that becomes both the main set and the diva’s personal universe.

From her return to the stage with the hit play Brujas onward, the role is taken over by Griselda Siciliani. Rather than mimic Moria, she brings her own interpretation, fitting comfortably within the character’s larger-than-life “container.” This is the more overtly television-driven Moria: more voluptuous, more embedded in celebrity culture, navigating gossip shows, private beaches, scandals, and media feuds that kept her permanently in the spotlight long before the term “viral” existed. This period covers her divorce, new relationships, and, above all, her experience of motherhood. The complicated, loving yet conflict-ridden bond with her daughter Sofía (played at different ages by Lola Ríos, Thea Garat, and Olivia Nuss) becomes the closest thing the series has to a central axis, challenging conventional ideas about motherhood. These episodes are more enclosed and darker—including a disturbing journey into Moria’s childhood—and at times lack the exuberant energy of the early chapters, even if they remain consistent with this phase of her life.

Cecilia Roth offers yet another version of Moria, one that seems to merge elements of the previous portrayals. Again, the goal isn’t imitation. Roth moves with ease through a universe of Almodóvar-like echoes, bringing her own cinematic history into the role. In the final two episodes—the last one especially strong—the series reaches the “meme” version of Moria: the one that thrives on social media, attracts new generations of fans, and even leads her into an unlikely episode in Paraguay. While her deep connection with LGBTQ+ audiences has long been part of her public identity, it’s in this late stage that it fully explodes in scale and visibility. The series is permeated by that bond—an intimate, almost spiritual connection between a sharp, ironic, larger-than-life woman and a community for whom she becomes something like a godmother, a guiding figure, and a generous ally.

The show inevitably recalls the Spanish series Veneno by Los Javis, whose protagonist shares certain affinities with Moria, while its blend of festivity and decadence evokes the cinema of Paolo Sorrentino and the excessive world of Italian tabloid TV—a landscape not so different from Argentina’s. There’s no parody here, nor any attempt at sociological diagnosis. Moria is a first-person portrait that mirrors its subject’s own ambitions: to use mainstream media forms as vehicles for something disruptive. Moria Casán has always operated that way, transforming the archetype of the voluptuous sex symbol into a transgressive icon. Van de Couter’s bet is that his series can belong to that same lineage—taking an increasingly standardized streaming format and bending it into something personal, excessive, and radical. That’s where both Moria and Moria exist: at the precise intersection of fantasy, science fiction, and what we insist on calling reality.