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Though Olivier Assayas has effortlessly weaved between the epic (Carlos) and the slight (Irma Vep) throughout his career, his films are consistently rooted in an existential realism. There’s a rugged intimacy between the director and his protagonists, one which richly infuses his films with both affection and artistry. It's a trademark that continues with Clouds of Sils Maria, a blistering meditation on aging anchored by a flat-out brilliant Juliette Binoche.
Assayas assigns his latest film a cinematic theatricality. It's segmented by chronological vignettes, each elegantly marked by a fade-to-black. The cosmopolitan and rural settings are vividly juxtaposed, seamlessly slinking between cafe-ridden side-streets and the mountainous country backdrop. And the actors have infinite room to play, even as their director often opens on them in the middle of conversation, expecting their skills to be fully warmed-up by the time the camera's rolling.
Assayas assigns his latest film a cinematic theatricality. It's segmented by chronological vignettes, each elegantly marked by a fade-to-black. The cosmopolitan and rural settings are vividly juxtaposed, seamlessly slinking between cafe-ridden side-streets and the mountainous country backdrop. And the actors have infinite room to play, even as their director often opens on them in the middle of conversation, expecting their skills to be fully warmed-up by the time the camera's rolling.
Binoche plays Maria Enders, a long-respected French actress who’s starting to show her age, career-wise: the dearth of substantial roles out there is a force of nature beyond her control. After being tasked with giving a commemoration to the late playwright/filmmaker who started her career, she and her assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), head down to Sils Maria. They endure the ceremony before being pitched by a hotshot theater director who wants Maria to return to the play that made her career; the proposal is a splashy, star-studded revival taking place a full two decades after Maria helped to originate the work.
The play is an infectiously catty duet, about an older woman and her affair with her personal assistant. Naturally, Maria is no longer suited to the role she originated; she’s being asked to play Helena, the “older” woman.
As a focal point, Clouds of Sils Maria invests in Maria and Valentine’s individual relationships to the play and the culture at large. They rehearse -- sometimes in the countryside house, sometimes out in the mountains -- with Valentine taking on the role of the assistant. In-between scenes, they argue and laugh and confide and drink. Maria’s resentment of the play and her new character builds; Valentine, meanwhile, is stuck in an identity crisis, holding onto the generation ahead of (and not understood by) Maria even as she tries desperately to provide thoughtful, bone-deep analysis to impress her mentor.
It’s a clever conceit. Maria interprets her midlife crisis by confronting her most famed role from a completely different perspective, and by seeing it through the eyes of someone else in Valentine. The dynamics that emerge are drawn with nuance and no shortage of wit: even the way the two perceive superhero blockbusters, for instance, is conveyed distinctly in regards to their personalities, along with plenty of intriguing ideas about the contemporary culture to grapple with.
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Predictably, Valentine bears the brunt of the revelation. She’s reading those lines, inhabiting the character who’s soullessly manipulating Maria’s. There’s always affection between the two women, a curious understanding and mutual admiration that radiates. But the tension escalates, with the emotional dependence steadily building. Art imitates life, and life art, to a too-substantial degree. As Assayas blurs that line, and these conversations become less and less distinguishable between the artificial and the real, Clouds of Sils Maria achieves a hypnotic power.
Of course, as our main characters dig into the play, it’s clear that the dynamics within it are too obvious; it’s the fantasy, perhaps, of a playwright who gave all the power to his ingénue. Maria couldn’t see this at 19 years old; now she can, and she despises it. She hates that she’s been handed the pathetic character, the one Valentine believes to eventually commit suicide. (“It’s more ambiguous,” Maria condescendingly replies.) She leeches off of Valentine in the process, near-deliberately inverting the dynamic from the one present in the play. It’s a fascinating study of power and perspective as seen through the eyes of two women, each well-defined and yet boxed-in by the words of this opaque work of drama. While the play doesn’t echo real life, it conveys a truth, and it alters Maria. It shakes her, emphatically; This is where you are, it’s compelling her to admit.
Assayas’ set-up, then, is a tricky one. He’s blending artifice with reality, the themes in a broad piece of fiction with the interiority of two people on shaky ground. That layer of artifice is so thick, in fact, that it could easily hamper Clouds and make it difficult to connect with. It’s here where Binoche comes in, inhabiting her character with unimpeachable authenticity. Her performance has everything to do with performance, of acting through life. Maria’s vulnerability is key, her ability to extend beyond the page absolutely essential to the film's success -- with her buoyant laugh and bubbling passive-aggressiveness, Binoche manages that task and then some.
Stewart, meanwhile, is unexpectedly brilliant, putting a necessarily awkward and uncomfortable spin on Valentine’s behavior. She describes theme and ideas to Binoche in a way where it sounds ever-so-slightly off; it’s the word-vomit of an imposing, parasitic superior’s underling.
Binoche and Stewart graciously stroke the film with naturalism, while Assayas surrounds it with a cloudy, vast mystique. He’s not a showy director, allowing the immensity of the landscapes and the complexity of his characters to set the mood. But as an auteur, he decides exactly what this film is: theatrical in its dense conversations, loose in the unique and independent personalities of each character, mystical in its isolated locale. There are echoes of Chekhov here (as well as a well-timed reference), with a thematic fusion of aging, performance and the quiet countryside taking center-stage. Assayas sets on a psychologically arresting tone, within a moody guise that’s visually luminous and narratively unyielding.
The film's final act considers Chloe Grace Moretz’s Joanna, the “new generation” actress who’s always in the tabloids and is generating attention for her work in a superhero movie franchise. She has also, to Maria's displeasure, been cast opposite her in the play. Yet despite her characteristics, Joanna is not written off, not treated as a joke. She is given a life and a level of depth, just as Maria and Valentine are. These women are products of their generations, yes, but they’re also individualistic. This idea, intelligently conveyed by each actress, perfectly illustrates the rare quality this film holds.
When Joanna and Maria are in rehearsal, Maria complains to her co-star about the way she's playing a scene: “The way you leave the room, it’s as if Helena is completely forgotten.” Stumped, Joanna responds, “And…?” She views Helena (and Maria?) as someone who's been moved on from. Here is a moment that all but embodies the central tension here: the play and its relationships exist in an artificial construct -- it’s an expression of power and lust from a man behind a desk, and it doesn’t ring very true -- but the experience of inhabiting the play and its ideas is unavoidably formative.
These women perform it, and thus, they can’t turn away from what the play has to say. Crucially, neither can we. Clouds of Sils Maria begins and ends as an evocative foray into a woman’s contention with her age, her femininity and her artistry. Yet in-between, Mr. Assayas and his extraordinary cast touch something painfully true and marvelously profound. It’s provocatively existential and prickly in its humanity. And it ends, after two breathless hours of confrontations both “fake” and real, as an unparalleled account of performance and living -- and, more importantly, of how hard it is to tell the difference.
Grade: A