Clouds of Sils Maria

Clouds of Sils Maria is not only one of 2014’s best films, it is one of the most representative. This was a year of quiet, contemplative pictures that favored intellectual thematic exploration over visceral, carefully plotted narratives. It was also a year with a large number of films that explored how aging affects identity by casting middle-aged and mature movie stars as fictional celebrities at midlife crossroads.  Working in English, the gifted French writer/director Olivier Assayas (Something in the Air, Carlos, Irma Vep) interweaves several of his favorite subjects— history, the artistic process, show business, the generation gap, and the profound effect past decisions have on the present lives of individuals.  The sublime Juliet Binoche (Certified Copy, Caché, The English Patient) plays a famous actress in her late 40s named Maria Enders who hopes to recapture the waning spotlight by returning to the stage in a revival of the play that launched her career. Maria is unsure if she should agree to the project, because this time out she’d be playing the part of the older woman, and she still strongly identifies (and is identified) with the ingénue role she played twenty years before.  She and her devoted assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) travel to the late playwright’s house in the secluded, picturesque Swiss Alps village of Sils Maria to prepare for the performance.

Clouds of Sils Maria might have ended up as slight as David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars and Chris Rock’s Top Five or as heavy-handed as Alejandro Iñárritu’s Birdman or Ari Folman’s The Congress—all films from the same year that tackle similar themes with varying degrees of success.  But Sils Maria gets under the viewer’s skin and burrows deep to an extent that does not happen with those other, more surface dwelling movies. The film is deceptively simple in terms of its storytelling, yet psychologically complex in terms of what we actually absorb from watching it.  Assayas probes so thoughtfully and convincingly into his characters and into the subject matter that the film is less akin to this year’s other “aging actor movies” and more worthy of comparisons to the disparate masterpieces All About Eve (1950) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Persona (1966) by Ingmar Bergman. In fact, watching Sils Maria creates much the same effect on a viewer as watching a great Bergman picture. The characters are hyper-analytical, much of the dialogue overtly literary, yet the film deals with very basic, universal emotions and impulses. 

As with Julianne Moore’s character in Maps to the Stars, the potential comeback vehicle for the actress at the center of this picture is a high-profile remake that challenges her perceptions of herself. Binoche’s sharp, subtle, multi-layered embodiment of Maria is the opposite of Moore’s more showy (and award-winning) performance in Maps.  Like Michael Keaton and his character in Birdman, there are many parallels between Binoche and the fictional Maria. But the fine line between reality and fantasy is more artfully blurred.  Assayas—who wrote the film that launched Binoche’s career, André Téchiné’s acclaimed Rendez-vous (1985), and who directed her in his own film, Summer Hours (2008)—wrote Sils Maria specifically for the beautiful, vibrant, versatile international leading lady who turned fifty this year. Like Binoche, Maria is the type of actress who works hard to get into a role, fighting with her characters in order to discover their emotions within her. We witness this process in fascinating scenes where Maria and Valentine analyze the play within this film and rehearse its dialogue. These scenes also provide a window onto the two women’s increasingly unhealthy codependency. Again, reality and fiction is blurred in an intriguing way because Stewart (star of the blockbuster Twilight franchise) clearly wants a career like the one Binoche has carved out for herself, in which she can move effortlessly between the world of international indie cinema and big-budget Hollywood fare.

What’s so wonderful about all the meta-layers of this picture is that they only enhance and never distract from the story and its themes. The fictional actress cast to play the role that made Maria famous is a hot, up-and-coming, young movie star named Jo-Anne Ellis—a less-substantive Jennifer Lawrence type who is known as much for her tabloid, off-screen life as for her acting.  Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, Hugo, Carrie) plays Jo-Anne in an inspired piece of casting.  She’s the perfect choice for this part because her on-screen and off-screen personas have not fully gelled. We don’t yet know if Moretz will turn out to be a flash in the pan like so many starlets who’ve come before her, a lasting and legitimate movie star like Binoche (and like Lawrence seems destined to become), or someone who’ll probably struggle for a long time in order to be fully taken seriously, like Stewart. 

Clouds of Sils Maria should certainly go a long way towards further legitimizing Stewart’s career—by my standards her work in films ranging from Into the Wild, Adventureland, and Still Alice is already extremely impressive). All three of Sils Maria’s lead actresses embody their characters with depth, poise, and dimension, but, surprisingly, Stewart shines the brightest. The low-key style of acting she has often been criticized for works perfectly here, providing subtle insight into how this young, high-functioning, intellectual celebrity assistant can get overwhelmed and confused by her relationship with her boss. Stewart underplays her role, yet never seems relaxed, due to Valentine’s many responsibilities and her lower status in the relationship. But Valentine is no mere underling, and the way Stewart’s style beautifully contrasts with Binoche’s more polished and passionate approach to her character helps to realize this distinction. Assayas and his principal actors create a complex dynamic between two central female protagonists that we rarely get to see in an English-language film.