(France/USA, 124 min.)
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz
Programme: Special Presentations (North American Premiere)
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| Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
The story behind Clouds
of Sils Maria says that the film begins with a challenge from Juliette
Binoche to Olivier Assayas to write a substantial and challenging female role.
Assayas delivers on the test by offering Binoche the complex aging actress
Maria Enders and Binoche assuredly meets Assayas’s own challenge put forth to
her in such a meaty role. Clouds of Sils
Maria sees Binoche and Assayas create one of the richest characters of
their respected and collaborative careers.
Clouds of Sils Maria thus makes one of the more notable feminist films of 2014 even though it’s directed by a male. It’s one of Assayas’s most skillful and evocative films yet. (The cinematography by Yorick Le Saux must be praised immediately for its crisp, involving, and graceful use of the natural light and Alpine surroundings.) This complicated character study deftly plays on art and life as Binoche and Assayas find the poetry in an aging actress reinventing herself for a quality part at middle age. Maria still carries the talent, grace, and beauty of her early years, but the roles offered to her by her meticulous assistant Val (Kristen Stewart) tell a different story. Maria can play aliens, mutants, or moms, or she can hawk products in commercials for Latin American television. That’s about it unless she wants to revel in reviews from the past and collect a royalty here or there.
The meatiest offer arises, though, when Maria receives a proposal
to revive the play that made her a star. The timing is curious, since the film
begins as she sits on a train waiting to accept an award for the director whose
play launched her career. His unexpected death, however, reignites interest in
his work, and soon an offer comes for Maria to return to the stage for Majola Snake, her breakout play, but not
in her famed role as the young Sigrid and instead as the elder boss, Helena.
It’s a lot to ask an actress to put her legacy on the line and go toe-to-toe
with someone else in her own part, but the role of a lifetime, literally in a
sense, offers too much prestige and cash incentive for Maria to decline in lieu
of some schlocky Hollywood garbage.
Clouds of Sils Maria
offers a beautiful triangle of art imitating life as Maria relinquishes Sigrid
to the current hot young thing, Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace-Moretz), and lets
herself be compared against the memory of her most iconic work. Binoche, who
remains one of the best and most beautiful stars of her or any generation,
utterly relishes the chance to confront the myth that age affects one’s ability
to produce good art. Her multi-layered performance is a thing of beauty, for
Maria often presents herself as acting a role within a role within a role as
she plays an actress playing a scripted character, who in turn serves as an
unscripted vehicle for her own fears and desires. Only a great actress can act
while acting (but not make the acting look forced) and Clouds of Sils Maria puts Binoche in her most captivating, beguiling
element.
Maria’s cultural and generational clash ignites when her
script reads with Val provoke alternative character readings than those for
which she is famous. Val, far closer to Sigrid’s age than Maria is, offers an
intuitive and intelligent reading of the power dynamics and subtle innuendos
that play out between Sigrid and Helena. Maria thus feels threatened in both
art and life, for young minds are pushing her in and making her seem more antiquated,
stuffy, and stiff as the very old-school thespians Maria herself replaced as a
young upstart.
Clouds of Sils Maria
really shifts the dynamics of art and life when the younger actor, Kristen
Stewart, proves herself the revelation of the film whilst sharing the screen
with one of film’s most acclaimed players. (Binoche remains the only actress to
win both an Oscar and the triple crown of Best Actress triumphs at the Cannes,
Berlin, and Venice film festivals.) Stewart attacks the role with thrilling
lust for life as Val digs into Sigrid and Helena’s affair and sees her own
dwindling relationship with Maria as a parallel to the play. Val ultimately
proves herself the better actor of the two as she utterly loses herself in the
role of the happy assistant and completely convinces Maria that all is well.
Stewart gives a deep performance in Clouds
of Sils Maria and, coupled with her moving work alongside Julianne Moore in
Still Alice, makes her one of the top
performing stars at TIFF this year.
Not quite as successful as proving herself the next Juliette
Binoche, though, is Moretz in her spirited, if completely mechanical,
performance as Jo-Ann. Moretz has a lot of fun playing the Lindsay Lohan-like
flavour of the minute, but she still overdoes it, especially when cut in
comparison to Stewart’s impeccably subtle feat. Her visibly secondary skill
works to the film’s advantage, though, for Jo-Ann adds spunky naïveté to Clouds of Sils Maria to further the
arguments that Val makes regarding age, experience, and the acting process in
her debates with Maria.
This triangle of actors and arty types goes in an unexpected
direction when Maria and Val finally take in the famed clouds of Sils Maria
that lend their significance to the film’s title. Maria and Val take a walk
through the serene, majestic Alps, but things go awry before they hit Maria Von
Trapp territory and Clouds of Sils Maria
opens up like the scope of the mountains as the significance of the play shifts
meaning forever. The titular clouds crawl along the mountaintops like a slinky
snake, beautiful yet ominous, as Assayas finds a stirring metaphor for the
storm to come. Actresses, like clouds, fade and re-appear, but sometimes only
for fleeting moments of beauty.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Please visit www.tiff.net for more information on this year’s
Festival.
