Clouds of Sils Maria

Greetings again from the darkness. Most of us don't spend much time re-living our past, and we certainly don't go through the emotional turmoil of analyzing our early lives from a different perspective. This story puts actress Maria (Juliette Binoche) in those shoes and then we watch as she fights, claws and battles her way through.

Maria is a well-respected veteran actress who has been offered a role in the revival of the play that made her a star more than 20 years earlier. The play was written by her mentor, who dies suddenly as she is on her way to visit. Hotshot director Klaus (Lars Eidinger) wants Maria for the role of the older woman, and this is difficult for Maria to accept since she played what she considers the far more interesting younger woman in the first version. Internal psychological warfare breaks out.

Maria's personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) struggles to keep Maria informed of today's world – celebrity gossip is especially key in their conversations. They also run lines together, and the parallels between the play and their real lives are so prevalent that the lines are often blurred between written word and spoken word. Things get really dicey when Jo-Ann (Chloe Grace Moretz) enters the picture as the talented, extremely popular, personally out of control actress slated to play opposite Maria in the play.

These three actresses are exceptional … yes, even you Kristen Stewart haters will be impressed. They each bring extraordinary depth to their role, and all are a bit outside of what would be considered their comfort zone. Their exchanges are fun, but what's not said is every bit as exciting and key.

Filmed in the Sils Maria area of the Alps, the landscape is beyond breathtaking. Maloja Snake is the title of the play, and it refers to the fantastic cloud formations that snake through the peaks and valleys of this marvel of nature. The scenery is a nice complement to the emotional rides each of the characters take, and writer/director Olivier Assayas ensures that we have no shortage of talking points after the film.

If you are a big fan of Magritte and Escher, of the writer Sebald, of Pirandello and Philip Glass and maybe the film "Koyaanisqatsi", I predict that you will love this film. If, on the other hand, you can't see the point of any of these and believe only in Aristotle's six elements of drama, there are many other excellent films you will like much better. It's a matter of taste.

In this film, writer/director Assayas deliberately blurs the distinctions between a number of levels. You start with people in the business of theatre and film: Marie Enders (Binoche), an experienced and celebrated actress, and Valentine (Stewart), her young, busy, competent personal assistant, and the people in Marie's past, living and dead.

Then there is the level of the characters in the play "The Maloja Snake" of twenty years ago, when Marie played the young and cruel Sigrid who loved and crushed her middle-aged employer, Helena. There is the level of the characters of the same play today, in which director Klaus Diesterweg (Lars Eidinger) hopes to recruit Marie to play Helena, possibly with a different take on the characters' motives and psychology, and in which Jo-Ann Ellis (Moritz) is eventually cast as Sigrid.

And there is also the level of the real human world, including events in the life of the real Kristen Stewart, which have striking parallels in the life of the fictional Ellis; the same seems to be true of Binoche and Enders, and I have read that "The Maloja Snake" is a parallel world version of Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant".

Spanning all these levels are the the real Switzerland and its real mountains and clouds, including the real Maloja Snake, a cloud phenomenon which was the subject of a black-and-white short film in the 1920's which is excerpted in Assayas' film and which can be seen on YouTube. The Internet spans all these levels too, and all the characters in the film are busy with texting and Skyping and Googling and checking out and fixing their IMDb info.

And then the work of playing characters, of determining and managing emotions, of arguing about what really motivates real or fictional or play-within-a-play fictional characters, either within the industry of the creative arts or not, also bridges the levels. We are constantly aware of the analogies and reflections among Valentine - Maria, Sigrid - Helena, Jo-Ann - Maria, and so on. Readings of lines take place, in which you sometimes wonder what level you are on, and we see a lot of the details of the creative discussions which must go into the production of plays or for that matter, not incidentally, movies such as "Clouds of Sils Maria". If you get lazy and suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to mentally presume that "Clouds" is a comprehensible narrative of the real world, Assayas will bring you up short without any ceremony.

So, does that kind of thing strike you as artistically intriguing or intellectually exciting? If it does, see the movie. It will give you a lot to think about and appreciate and puzzle about and discuss afterward. (The Swiss tourist board will thank you also.) If it seems a bit dry and abstract, well, you are fairly warned.

We witnessed the kinetic energy of the Oscar-winning Birdman about an aging actor making a comeback on the Broadway stage. Now with the expert and engaging Clouds of Sils Maria we witness a middle-aged actress, Maria (Juliette Binoche), contend with both her 20-year return to the same play but as the older character and the energy of a personal assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), that reminds Maria of time's passage and the changes in her profession.

Writer/director Olivier Assayas delights us with stunning camera work in an early sequence on the train;Hitchcock would love the camera and editing if you remember Strangers on a Train. Assayas also features the Alps with such loving cinematography you'll be booking a trip. Credit Yorick Le Saux for the editing and Marion Monnier for cinematography.

The heart of an excellent drama such as this is its words, the best way to convey the complex emotions each actress must display. Besides Binoche's up-close glamour, Kristin Stewart's sassy, dark beauty is there to remind us that youth rules.

The screenplay offers advice about the changing nature of dynamic dialogue: "The text is like an object. It's gonna change perspective based on where you're standing." (Valentine). In the case of Maria and Valentine, the sometimes screwball-comedy-like repartee reveals layers of perception and emotion heightened by the fact that we are witnessing the deconstruction of the acting experience: Maria holds to classical interpretation while Valentine's thesis is that spontaneity and electricity are the key components.

The plot of Maria's accepting a stage role for a play she acted in 20 years ago as the young lead loosely parallels the scenario of this film (young assistant provoking the older actress) until a climactic moment on the mountain, a moment whose ambiguity will demand you complete the scene for yourself. Regardless, you will know you have seen one of the best films of the year depicting the rigorous working of the art of acting given by two of the best actresses today in film (Stewart won a Cesar for this role, Binoche won an Oscar for English Patient, and a mature Chloe Grace Moretz is sure to be Oscar nominated soon!).

I was very glad that i attended the opening ceremony of the Beirut International Film Festival with the presence of Juliette Binoche screening this touching movie! We're talking here about a festival movie so if you're not ready for a lot of talking scenes, well this is not for you! The story itself is brought by Binoche to director Olivier Assayas about an actress at the peak of her career who is asked again to play a role in a play that made her famous years ago! Let's be clear: this movie is all about stunning performances by a great Trio of actresses Binoche, Stewart and Moretz! Everyone was so great performing the characters. Binoche made it clear that this movie talk about her career and how can it be disturbed or touched emotionally on every level when she'll reach a certain age and when new generations of actors will rise! A must see for cinema lovers and especially for professional actors!

"In the play you all know, Maloya Snake, he gave me everything I need to build a career on, my career."

Olivier Assayas and Juliette Binoche reunite after their previous collaboration (Summer Hours) in this wonderful meta film that has some slight similarities to Birdman. This could be the female version of that movie although not as entertaining and without all the technical achievements. It is also a little more subtle in its approach. The story begins on a train as re-known actress, Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is heading to Zurich with her personal assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart) to receive an award on behalf of a dear friend, Wilhelm Melchior, who is the reason why she is now a famous actress. Twenty years ago, he offered her the role to play the lead character in the stage and later on in the film adaptation of that play. On their way to Zurich they receive the terrible news of his passing which deeply saddens her. After the ceremony Valentine arranged a meeting with Klaus (Lars Eidinger) who wants Maria to play the older character in his adaptation of Wilhelm's novel. She continues to identify with the strong younger character and doesn't feel its correct for her to play the weaker role of Helen, but ultimately she agrees to do it. The lead character will be played by the promising young actress Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz) who has had her share of scandals with paparazzi's recently. In order to prepare for the role, Maria and Valentine travel to Wilhelm's former home in Sils Maria surrounded by the gorgeous Alps. Here, Maria is forced to reflect on her career and come to terms with the fact that she's an aging actress.

Clouds of Sils Maria is another film that reminds us that life imitates art because we are always finding ways to express ourselves and the means to do so is through art. Maria is forced to come to terms with her reality through the acceptance of this character she's not thrilled about playing because she doesn't seem to understand her. There are several scenes in which she is rehearsing the lines with Valentine that kind of blur the line between fantasy and reality. There were moments in which i didn't know if they were actually arguing or if they were simply reading the lines of the play. Those scenes were memorable and unique and I believe are at the center of this film. There are also some great conversations between the two about art and blockbuster Hollywood movies portraying the opposing two point of views. The film is rich with strong female characters exploring art and life in a rather authentic way. Clouds of Sils Maria may not be for everyone because it is slow paced and some scenes can become tedious if you aren't a patient viewer, but I found it a rewarding experience and a solid exploration of the passage of time and coming to terms with it. The classical music score (Pachelbel's Canon in D Major) also gives the film a touch of class. The scenery is also beautiful and it makes each conversation all the more profound.

Juliette Binoche has always been a wonderful actress so it comes as no surprise that she deliver yet another solid and touching performance. The real question everyone had was whether or not Kristen Stewart could hold her own next to this talented actress. The two share a lot of screen time together and at no point did I feel that Binoche was eating up the screen. Stewart gives in my opinion the best performance of her career (and I did really like her in Camp X-Ray and Still Alice) and she truly shines here. She won the Cesar (France's version of the Oscars) for best supporting screenplay and she proves that with the right material she can deliver solid roles. Chloe Grace Moretz also delivers a strong performance despite not having much screen time. She's hilarious in the scenes where Maria looks up her name on the internet and we get clips of the scandals she's been involved in. All in all, this is a solid film exploring some interesting subjects with solid performances and a beautiful landscape.

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