Clouds of Sils Maria
Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Written by: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace-Moretz, Lars Eidinger, Johnny Flynn, Angela Winkler, Hanns Zischler, Aljoscha Stadelmann, Gilles Tschudi, Benoit Peverelli, Claire Tran, Stuart Manashil
Drama - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 16 Apr 2015
Written by: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace-Moretz, Lars Eidinger, Johnny Flynn, Angela Winkler, Hanns Zischler, Aljoscha Stadelmann, Gilles Tschudi, Benoit Peverelli, Claire Tran, Stuart Manashil
Drama - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 16 Apr 2015
The median American blockbuster audience member is about to get a lesson in aging at 2015’s end when the new Star Wars installment arrives. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are going to show up much older than we left them at the end of Return of the Jedi. Audiences will still enthusiastically applaud, yet those old enough to remember the original trilogy will meditate on weightier issues than the new episode’s story and action scenes, perhaps mortality, the passage of time, and the maturation of viewpoints and opinions which arrive with age advancement. Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria channels similar thoughts with an aging actress up against her previous work, the death of her mentor, and the out with the old/in with the new show business methodology.
Separated into two acts and an epilogue, Clouds of Sils Maria hits the ground running on a loud and bouncing Zurich-bound train introducing us to famous stage and screen actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche, 2014’s Godzilla) and her multiple cell phone juggling personal assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart, 2014’s Still Alice). En route to celebrate Maria’s mentor, Wilhelm Melchior, the director who catapulted her to stardom when she was an 18 year-old ingénue, Melchior dies as the duo draws closer to their destination. Abruptly shifting moods from celebratory to morose, Maria confronts past memories and present opportunities, specifically about the play responsible for making her a known quantity.
Separated into two acts and an epilogue, Clouds of Sils Maria hits the ground running on a loud and bouncing Zurich-bound train introducing us to famous stage and screen actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche, 2014’s Godzilla) and her multiple cell phone juggling personal assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart, 2014’s Still Alice). En route to celebrate Maria’s mentor, Wilhelm Melchior, the director who catapulted her to stardom when she was an 18 year-old ingénue, Melchior dies as the duo draws closer to their destination. Abruptly shifting moods from celebratory to morose, Maria confronts past memories and present opportunities, specifically about the play responsible for making her a known quantity.
“Maloja Snake” is a play where a young, scheming office worker takes advantage of her middle-aged boss, emotionally and physically, with a catastrophic end. Maria played the young Sigrid to much acclaim. Now, with a possible revival on the horizon, a current ‘it’ director wants Maria to play the older woman, Helena. There is any number of reasons Maria stiff arms the offer not least of which is she still identifies with the young Sigrid. The world sees her as Helena though, including Valentine. To the surprise of no one, Maria signs on for the play and secludes herself and Valentine in the hamlet of Sils Maria to study the script.
Act 2 is the antithesis of Act 1’s hectic maneuvering. The pacing slows and a general malaise settles upon Maria and Valentine as they hike the surrounding Swiss Alps and bounce ideas off one another. Assayas starts to play with the audience’s footing here. Are we watching a play within a play? Are the harsh back-and-forths between Maria and Val all in the script or are they talking to each other beyond the page? Assayas wouldn’t so overtly make “Maloja Snake” come to life on the mountaintops but he takes his fair share of pokes at the idea.
The Snake of the eponymous play is actually a weather phenomenon which naturally occurs in this particular Alpine valley. Clouds wind their way among the mountaintops producing a gorgeous scene of a twisting and turning cover. Assayas frequently returns to this Snake and leaves the camera pointed at it long enough for your mind to wander. He plays Pachelbel’s Canon in D on top of the scene and while this piece may be overly familiar to movie audiences, it is refreshing to hear it over a sequence not associated with a wedding or death. I also picked up that something was off about the camera; it was grainy. Assayas shot Clouds of Sils Maria on 35mm film instead of a digital camera. It says something that a movie shot on actual film stock in this day and age makes one do a double take.
Chloë Grace-Moretz (2014’s Laggies) drops in as Jo-Ann Ellis, the new Sigrid, and the personification of how youth and a pretty face triumphs over all, even in the West End. Val instructs tabloid-avoiding Maria about Jo-Ann’s Lindsay Lohan-like run-ins with the law, her paparazzi antagonism, and her role in breaking up a marriage. The whole conversation is a bit meta as it is Kristen Stewart, no stranger to paparazzi entanglements and affair accusations, who chronicles Jo-Ann’s recent history. Another Maria/Val generation gap pops up when Val defends the depth and artistry of a Hollywood superhero film to an incredulous Maria who can only laugh hysterically in her face at such galling opinions.
Binoche and Stewart create an absorbing chemistry and are noticeably well connected in their long-running screen time together. The French film intelligentsia even went so far as to award the Best Supporting Actress César (the French Oscar) to Stewart, a first for an American actress. Some may accuse the dialogue of being so flowery and high-minded it borders on abstract pretension, but I find it works in the film. I don’t know very many acclaimed French actresses who hang out in Switzerland, but I’d like to imagine this is how they talk.
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