For many people, growing older is a harrowing prospect. Imagine if you were a middle-aged actress. No matter how talented you might be, you will inevitably be confronted with the dread reality of the industry’s ageism.
Such is the case with Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche), the lead character in Clouds of Sils Maria. Maria is an accomplished actress at the apex of her international renown. However, she is struggling with insecurities. Maria is unable to reconcile herself to the unavoidable reality that youth is a thing of the past.
Maria’s hyper-efficient personal assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), is busily engaged in orchestrating the details of her boss’ life. This includes not only Maria’s career, but her acrimonious, distracting divorce. Maria’s breakthrough took place decades before in the theatrical and cinematic versions of Maloja Snake, whose title refers to a meteorological phenomenon in the Maloja Pass of the Swiss Alps.
In Maloja Snake, Maria had played Sigrid, a faithless ingénue who is the personal assistant to Helena, an accomplished, middle-aged actress. Helena becomes obsessed with Sigrid, who is half her age. Now, Maria is aboard a train en route to Zurich. There, she will present a lifetime achievement award to Wilhelm Melchior, who had written and directed Maloja Snake.
Yes, just like Maloja Snake, the text of Sils Maria features an aging actress with a much younger personal assistant. Is that meta enough for you or do you need to be hit over the head with a giant mallet?
Before Maria reaches Zurich, she receives some startling news. Wilhelm has died. Maria learns that Wilhelm had been suffering from a terminal disease and taken his own life.
Despite the ominous development, the show must go on. Now, the honoree will not be there to accept the award. Instead, he will be fêted posthumously with Maria as the principal speaker.
Before the ceremony, director Klaus Diesterweg (Lars Eidinger) approaches Maria, proposing to revive Maloja Snake. There’s only one catch. This time around, Maria will play the older woman, not the younger character that had sparked her career. Maria protests that she still identifies with Sigrid, not Helena.
However, Klaus has already lined up a notorious actress, Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz), to play Sigrid. Jo-Ann has starred in several Hollywood superhero films and has box office cache. Off-screen, she is a total train wreck whose woes evoke Lindsay Lohan.
Incongruously, Maria is convinced to play opposite Jo-Ann in the remake of Maloja Snake. Wouldn’t she be deterred by the gimmicky aspect of the recasting? Would she really risk her carefully earned credibility by getting involved with such a dicey proposition? After all, isn’t her co-star an unreliable actress, afflicted with substance abuse problems?
What are we left with? The film devolves into a heavy-handed meta-reflection on the parallels between the stage characters of Sigrid and Helena and the challenges that Binoche and Stewart have encountered in real life.
The film is immersed in further meta parallels. The screenwriter/director Olivier Assayas had co-written Rendez-vous, the 1985 drama that was a star-making role for Binoche. Now, Assayas writes a screenplay about a character that Binoche might have played 30 years ago. As Assayas has acknowledged, “The thing I was interested in was making not a film with Juliette Binoche, but a film about Juliette Binoche.”
Clouds of Sils Maria was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. It later won the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize for Best Film and a César Award for Kristen Stewart for her supporting role in the film. It has elicited overwhelming critical praise. I regard these encomiums as being largely undeserved for a string of facile abstractions. Clouds of Sils Maria is a meta-mess.
Clouds of Sils Maria
Two and a half stars
Juliette Binoche
Kristen Stewart
Rated R
Directed by Olivier Assayas
