Olivier Assayas may be one of the finest directors on either side of the Pond but his work, as subtle as it is strong, has rarely inspired superlatives. This may change with his newest, “Clouds of Sils Maria.” It’s hard to imagine a swoonier, smarter meditation on the intersection of gender, age, power, and the performance arts – especially one that passes the Bechdel Test with such flying colors. Here lies a film so deftly soulful that it revives the most tired of cinematic genres: the metamovie.
Internationally acclaimed movie star Juliette Binoche plays internationally acclaimed movie star Maria Enders, whose most intimate – if one-sided – relationship is with her personal assistant, Val (Kristen Stewart, who’s presumably had an assistant or two in her time). Enders has been asked to appear in a new staging of the (fictional) play “Maloja Snake” as a suicidal, middle-aged businesswoman romantically manipulated by a ruthless twenty-something female assistant. The problem: She still identifies with the younger character, whom she portrayed in a film adaptation of the same story – and which launched her career two decades before. Add in the fact that the actress who originally portrayed the older woman died soon after the play closed, and Maria is genuinely spooked, especially after the playwright, Wilhelm (loosely based on German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder), dies on the night she’s to accept an award on his behalf. Lest all this not be meta enough, Assayas co-wrote Binoche’s first starring role in Andre Techine’s “Rendez-vous” (1985), about an up-and-coming actress, and created “Clouds of Sils Maria” when she challenged him, after appearing in his real-estate drama “Summer Hours” (2008), to write a part that better encapsulated the female experience. Continue Reading →
