Summary
Twenty years after starring in a play that launched her career, a film star returns to the play to act in a different role, which forces her to face certain truths about herself.
My Thoughts
Oliver Assayas is quickly becoming one of my favorite modern directors. He’s able to create such rich characters and settings in a relatively short amount of time, he knows how to keep even the most basic scenes interesting, and he has a way of beautifully framing his sets and locations. This film is a quiet character study that uses ambiguity to craft multiple meanings within one story; it’s inventive and compelling, and no matter which way you interpret it, it has valuable meaning.
(SOME SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH)
Maria (Juliette Binoche, “Chocolat”) is a famous French actress just coming off a superhero film, looking for a change in the rolls she’s playing. Her assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart, “Personal Shopper”) works diligently to ensure Maria makes it to her appointments on time and juggles her personal phone calls and emails. One morning when they are on a train, Valentine receives a phone call for Maria, alerting her that one of her old mentors committed suicide. Maria feels vulnerable during this time, and an up-and-coming director, who wants her to play a part in an upcoming revival of Maloja Snake, the play that originally made her famous, approaches her. The play revolves around a lesbian relationship of an older woman and a younger woman, ending in the older woman’s suicide. When the play was originally put on, Maria played the younger woman, and now, she’ll play the older. As she and Valentine retreat to Sils Maria to practices her lines, Maria begins to deal with certain truths about herself.
(SPOILERS END)
“Clouds of Sils Maria” features exquisite shots of a Sils Maria, and the location itself seems to almost become another character in the film. Assayas always has an eye for what looks beautiful, and this movie is no different. Much of the film itself revolves around a weather phenomenon that happens over Sils Maria, called the snake. The snake is a cloud formation that starts over the lake and flows outward through the valley; there are absolutely gorgeous shots of this happening in real time. It’s marvelous to watch, but beyond that, it seems to be a metaphor for the way time moves, and passes by our main character.
Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart are both fantastic in this, and Chloe Grace Moretz (“Suspiria (2018)”)holds her own as well. The film primarily focuses on Binoche and Stewart and their relationship, which is, at times, rather strained. Stewart and Binoche have different ideals and ideas about how life should be lived, they have different interests, and they live their lives in very different ways. Despite their differences, however, it’s clear that there is a strong attraction to one another. This attraction is amped up by the lines that they keep running, because the play revolves around a lesbian love affair.
Now, there are a few ways to interpret this film, and I suppose I’ll throw a big SPOILERS warning out there now, because I want to go into some deeper details of this movie. As Stewart and Binoche run their lines, it almost becomes impossible to tell if they are just saying their lines or speaking untold truths about the relationship between them. Maria really seems to love Val, but Val seems to hold Maria at a distance, mirroring the affair in the play their rehearsing. As the story goes on, Maria and Val’s relationship becomes more strained, because they both see things so differently, and in the end, Val leaves without even saying goodbye. As the place where Val disappears was the same place that Maria’s mentor killed himself, it’s possible that Val killed herself too. Another possibility is that Maria’s overbearing love came to be too much for Val, and Val quit her position. Both of these interpretations have some merit, and they actually say a lot about both characters. But the interpretation I believe the director was going for was that Val never existed in the first place. Val was a projection of how Maria saw herself; still as a young woman. As Maria struggles to learn her lines and come to terms with the fact that she’s aging, she and Val get further and further apart. I believe that this whole film was a metaphor for Maria learning to cope with the passage of time- the snake of clouds slowly rolling out of the valley, if you will.
(SPOILERS END)
Verdict
There are many layers to this film, and it’s far more interesting with its ending being as ambiguous as it is. The past and present and future have a sort of repeating chorus; it rhymes, it’s like poetry. If you’re a fan of modern art films or character studies, please check this out. Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche were both marvelous; Oliver Assayas proves once again he’s got a lot to say, and in a way that no one else can; and the cinematography of “the Snake” cloud formation alone makes this movie worth watching.
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