MOVIE REVIEW
“Clouds of Sils Maria”
Grade: B
Starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Grace Moretz. Directed by Olivier Assayas. English and French with English subtitles.
Rated R for language and brief graphic nudity. Check listings for theaters. 2 hours, 3 minutes.
Bottom line: A richly imperfect piece about life in film
By Betsy Sharkey
Los Angeles Times
It is best to just let yourself get lost in the “Clouds of Sils Maria” for a little while. Beautiful as they build then snake through the Engadin Valley in the Swiss Alps, they become maddening as they cloak the emotions and ambitions of a middle-aged actress and a rising young star.
In this richly imperfect piece about the vagaries to be found in a life spent working in film, French writer-director Olivier Assayas is most interested in the murky idea of returning — the ways in which humans circle back to the people they’ve been, the past they’ve had, no certainty about what might be discovered there.
Binoche plays acclaimed actress Maria Enders, not yet comfortable in the skin of the middle-aged woman she’s become. Kristen Stewart is her personal assistant Valentine, a smart, efficient, opinionated right hand who has become as much an artistic sounding board as scheduler of meetings. Chloe Grace Moretz enters a bit later as Jo-Ann Ellis, the splashy rising star and an edgy, unruly favorite of the tabloid press. Her presence on a project that would remake the film that made Maria a star — with Jo-Ann stepping into Maria’s role and Maria taking on the older, desperate woman on the wane — sets the stage for a great deal of soul-searching about movies, the mainstream, artistic value and fame.
Through all of it, the relationship that captivates most is the one between Maria and Valentine. As stirring as Binoche is as Maria, Stewart is breathtaking as Valentine. Assayas uses the issues he parses in “Sils” to zero in on a personal-professional minefield that Stewart has navigated as well.
Stewart does exactly what Valentine describes as Jo-Ann’s great gift — she becomes the character, completing disappearing inside Valentine. It makes the interplay between Binoche, a master of that sort of disappearing act as well, and Stewart mesmerizing to watch.
That interplay is the very heart of the film. The push and pull of their relationship, the codependence of a star and those close to her, comes alive as actress and assistant run lines, much of it as they hike the mountains around Sils Maria. With Yorick Le Saux as director of photography, the Alps provide a backdrop both stunning and physically challenging, which plays into the essence of what the actors are saying: Maria fighting the very idea of the older character every step along the way, Valentine arguing its relevance, its significance.
“Sils Maria” was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. Some have suggested the director’s stinging candor about industry elitism may have cost the film the win. Perhaps, but I suspect the various loose ends he leaves and the occasional tabloid culture cliches that slip in had a part in its undoing. Still, the chance to look behind the curtain that Assayas has lifted so artfully is a temptation one shouldn’t resist.
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