Film ReviewsClouds of Sils Maria: slither the ethereal
May 22, 2015 Anchorage Press
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The Maloja snake, a serpentine cloud formation particular to this region, slithers through the Engadin valley nestled in the Swiss Alps and surges past the small town of Sils Maria. The Maloja cloud phenomena is visible in the early mornings during the autumn when warm air rises up the slopes of the Maloja Pass and is transformed into a low-hanging cloud formation. The wind propels the ethereal snake as it slips, slides, and crawls between the mountains for days at a time or until the wind changes again. The sight is at once mesmerizing and dreadful because it's indicative of bad weather to come. Clouds of Sils Maria is the dramatic articulation of the timeless phenomenon via the story of a middle-aged movie star who comes full circle in her art and in the process is confronted with past and present, aging and change.
Clouds of Sils Maria is one of Olivier Assayas' stronger works. Like his contemporary, Pedro Almodovar, Assayas is a director of actresses. He engages them on an equal footing resulting in intelligent, charismatic, performances with complex and fluid character development. Juliette Binoche plays Maria Enders, a movie star in her mid-40s whose career is solid and still thriving but whose choice of roles is changing along with her personal and physical life-basically, she's getting older. Maria's dependence on, and interconnection with, her assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), grows more complicated as Maria deals with the death of her friend, Wilhelm Melchior, and at the same time is given an opportunity to work on a new production of the play Maloja Snake, which originally launched her career and was written by Melchior. The play is about the catastrophic and entangled romantic relationship between Sigrid, a young and calculating woman, and Helena, her older and precarious boss. Maria originally played the younger Sigrid; 20 years later, Maria is asked to play the older woman. In the proposed production of the play, Maria is to play opposite the young Jo-Ann Ellis, a rebellious and tempestuous actress played by Chloë Grace Moretz. The chemistry among the actresses, in any combination, is intense. All three deliver performances worthy of Academy Awards, in fact Stewart just became the first American actress to win the prestigious Cesar in France for her role as Valentine.
Clouds of Sils Maria is layered with symbolism as the plot lines between the movie and the play become blurred, which delights and confuses viewers as they try to discern which story is Sigrid and Helena's and which is Maria and Valentine's. On top of that, the actual realization of the film is teeming with circular references to personal and geographical histories. Assayas, along with André Téchiné wrote the film Rendez-vous, and gave Binoche her breakthrough role in 1985. In Rendez-vous she plays a young actress trying to "make it." It's no surprise that Assayas wrote Clouds of Sils Maria with Binoche in mind. The pairing between directors and their actors is like the intimate pairing of painters with their muses, and film history is filled with them: Bergman and Ullmann, Almodovar and Maura, Allen and Keaton, Zhang and Gong, and Assayas and Cheung, just to name a few. Clouds of Sils Maria helps viewers delve into the idea of timelessness as Assayas reaches for Arnold Fanck's 1924 documentary about the Maloja snake and offers it to viewers, most likely, for the first time. Assayas' shots of the Maloja snake mirror Franck's work and leave viewers spellbound, so much so that the viewer is unaware that the film was actually shot on the Italian side of the Alps due to more agreeable film subsidies.
Olivier Assayas is a master of his craft, in Clouds of Sils Maria he delivers a sublime and complex storyline that makes the most difficult of scenes seem like a walk in the park-or in this case, a walk through the mountainous countryside. A good portion of the plot takes place as the actresses deliver lines and step in and out of the play's characters while they walk along the mountainside. Shooting complex scenes outside is one of the more challenging tasks filmmakers can undertake because what they save in lighting and sets, they make up for in mitigating the weather and environmental conditions. The flow of scenes and dialog in Clouds of Sils is seamless and this gives viewers the opportunity to focus on the heart of the movie, the relationship between Maria and Valentine. The multidimensional dynamics draw parallels between love and power, mother and child, master and servant, experience and innocence, desire and envy. Valentine reminds Maria and viewers that one can't have one's cake and eat it too, that while there are great losses when youth fades, there are also privileges and experiences that are gained, making any point in one's life incomparable to another.
Clouds of Sils Maria shows on Monday, May 25 at Bear Tooth Theatrepub, 5:30 p.m.
Clouds of Sils Maria is one of Olivier Assayas' stronger works. Like his contemporary, Pedro Almodovar, Assayas is a director of actresses. He engages them on an equal footing resulting in intelligent, charismatic, performances with complex and fluid character development. Juliette Binoche plays Maria Enders, a movie star in her mid-40s whose career is solid and still thriving but whose choice of roles is changing along with her personal and physical life-basically, she's getting older. Maria's dependence on, and interconnection with, her assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), grows more complicated as Maria deals with the death of her friend, Wilhelm Melchior, and at the same time is given an opportunity to work on a new production of the play Maloja Snake, which originally launched her career and was written by Melchior. The play is about the catastrophic and entangled romantic relationship between Sigrid, a young and calculating woman, and Helena, her older and precarious boss. Maria originally played the younger Sigrid; 20 years later, Maria is asked to play the older woman. In the proposed production of the play, Maria is to play opposite the young Jo-Ann Ellis, a rebellious and tempestuous actress played by Chloë Grace Moretz. The chemistry among the actresses, in any combination, is intense. All three deliver performances worthy of Academy Awards, in fact Stewart just became the first American actress to win the prestigious Cesar in France for her role as Valentine.
Clouds of Sils Maria is layered with symbolism as the plot lines between the movie and the play become blurred, which delights and confuses viewers as they try to discern which story is Sigrid and Helena's and which is Maria and Valentine's. On top of that, the actual realization of the film is teeming with circular references to personal and geographical histories. Assayas, along with André Téchiné wrote the film Rendez-vous, and gave Binoche her breakthrough role in 1985. In Rendez-vous she plays a young actress trying to "make it." It's no surprise that Assayas wrote Clouds of Sils Maria with Binoche in mind. The pairing between directors and their actors is like the intimate pairing of painters with their muses, and film history is filled with them: Bergman and Ullmann, Almodovar and Maura, Allen and Keaton, Zhang and Gong, and Assayas and Cheung, just to name a few. Clouds of Sils Maria helps viewers delve into the idea of timelessness as Assayas reaches for Arnold Fanck's 1924 documentary about the Maloja snake and offers it to viewers, most likely, for the first time. Assayas' shots of the Maloja snake mirror Franck's work and leave viewers spellbound, so much so that the viewer is unaware that the film was actually shot on the Italian side of the Alps due to more agreeable film subsidies.
Olivier Assayas is a master of his craft, in Clouds of Sils Maria he delivers a sublime and complex storyline that makes the most difficult of scenes seem like a walk in the park-or in this case, a walk through the mountainous countryside. A good portion of the plot takes place as the actresses deliver lines and step in and out of the play's characters while they walk along the mountainside. Shooting complex scenes outside is one of the more challenging tasks filmmakers can undertake because what they save in lighting and sets, they make up for in mitigating the weather and environmental conditions. The flow of scenes and dialog in Clouds of Sils is seamless and this gives viewers the opportunity to focus on the heart of the movie, the relationship between Maria and Valentine. The multidimensional dynamics draw parallels between love and power, mother and child, master and servant, experience and innocence, desire and envy. Valentine reminds Maria and viewers that one can't have one's cake and eat it too, that while there are great losses when youth fades, there are also privileges and experiences that are gained, making any point in one's life incomparable to another.
Clouds of Sils Maria shows on Monday, May 25 at Bear Tooth Theatrepub, 5:30 p.m.