Clouds of Sils Maria

Director: Olivier Assayas
Screenplay: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Juliette Binoche (Maria Enders), Kristen Stewart (Valentine), Chloë Grace Moretz (Jo-Ann Ellis), Lars Eidinger (Klaus Diesterweg), Johnny Flynn (Christopher Giles), Angela Winkler (Rosa Melchior), Hanns Zischler (Henryk Wald), Nora von Waldstätten (Actress in Sci-fi Movie), Brady Corbet (Piers Roaldson), Aljoscha Stadelmann (Urs Kobler), Claire Tran (Maria’s London Assistant)
MPAA Rating: R
Year of Release: 2014
Country: France / Germany / Switzerland
Clouds of Sils Maria Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Clouds of Sils MariaLife and art collide and blur in more ways than one in Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria—sometimes provocatively, sometimes a bit too self-consciously. The film is a puzzle, but one you don’t necessarily have to solve in order to enjoy it or take something away from it. Suffice it to say that, at one point late in the film, a character just disappears with no explanation, and it doesn’t really matter what happened. There are numerous potential explanations, including the possibility that the character never even existed in the first place, but the ambiguity is best left alone—it’s what makes the film work.

Juliette Binoche, who originally brought the idea for the film to Assayas (Summer Hours, Carlos), stars as Maria Enders, a movie actress who has entered her 40s and therefore is no longer being considered for the kind of roles she once coveted as a young star. When the film opens she is on a train to accept an award on behalf of the playwright who first made her a star by casting her as the fiery ingénue in his play Maloja Snake, and soon she is being courted by a dynamic young stage director who wants to revive the play with her playing the older woman who is seduced by the character she played two decades earlier. That role is going to Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz), a rising young Hollywood star with a penchant for scandal, which forces Maria to face the realities of being a “woman of a certain age” in an industry that prizes youth and beauty above all else.

Most of the film takes place in the Swiss Alps where Maria is holed up in a chalet with her assistant, Val (Kristen Stewart), preparing for the role (the film’s title refers to the area in Switzerland where they’re staying, which is so high in the mountains that the clouds meander through the valley in a snake-like form—the so-called “Maloja snake” that gives the play-within-the-film its title). Maria and Val are opposites in every way: Maria is a fortysomething European who clings tightly to upstanding ideas of respectable art, while Val is a twentysomething American who is not ashamed to enjoy middle-brow schlock. Yet, they have a strong bond, one that transcends the role of employer and employee, actress and assistant, which is why, when Val runs lines with Maria, it is often difficult at first to know whether they’re having an actual conversation or rehearsing dialogue. Their conversations also allow Assayas to explore the nature of what passes for entertainment today, with Maria upholding the longstanding argument that the Hollywood blockbuster mentality is empty of meaning while Val argues that even the most seemingly asinine superhero movie has depth and significance.

Unfortunately, the undercurrent of commentary on filmmaking itself is one the film’s weaker angles, even as it allows for some humorous meta-moments, such as when Stewart, the star of the venerable Twilight franchise, off-handedly notes that a script sent to Maria involves werewolves for some reason. However, Assayas, a French filmmaker who has long been associated with what we would typically understand as European art film, doesn’t seem to have a good handle on the nature of the Hollywood blockbuster machine. Val’s defense of comic book movies sounds thin because I don’t think Assayas believes a word of it, and when we get a scene from a sci-fi movie starring Jo-Ann, it is so badly done in terms of mimicking the genre’s style that it makes one wonder if Assayas has actually seen any such films. Instead of looking like Transformers or The Avengers, it looks like a retro Euro art film set on a spaceship (to be fair, some of this may have been due to budgetary limitations). Similarly, Jo-Ann’s bad girl behavior, which Maria watches via online videos, is so blatantly, comically bad that it feels more like caricature than a snapshot of troubled young talent.

Luckily, Clouds of Sils Maria is first and foremost a showcase for its prodigiously talented cast, and Maria and Val’s scenes together, which comprise the majority of the film’s running time, are superb. Binoche, who in a bit of art-imitating-life, first became a star in the 1985 film Rendez-vous, which Assayas co-wrote, plays Maria with just the right balance of old-style dignity and a steadily growing sense of displacement that makes her feel brittle. When she laughs at some of Val’s assertions regarding Hollywood movies, it has a quality that suggests she is trying to will away the possibility that such productions could have meaning because she’s afraid that they might.

The real revelation, though, is Stewart, who subtly turns Val into a cunning enigma of a character (Stewart became the first American actress to win a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar, for the role). She is both devil’s advocate and provocateur, but never overtly. Her very presence and willingness to voice a different viewpoint forces Maria to confront her own assumptions and limitations, which makes their relationship in constant threat of breakdown. Like Ingmar Bergman before him, Assayas has an intuitive feel for the female psyche, and best moments in Clouds of Sils Maria burrow deep into Maria and Val’s fraught emotional connection.

The Clouds of Sils Maria Criterion Collection Blu-Ray

Aspect Ratio2.39:1
Audio
  • English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
  • French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
  • Subtitles English
    Supplements
  • “Beyond Time,” interview with director Olivier Assayas
  • “Parallel Lives,” program featuring actors Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart
  • Cloud Phenomena of Maloja (1924) documentary
  • Trailer
  • Essay by critic Molly Haskell
  • DistributorThe Criterion Collection
    SRP$39.95
    Release DateJune 28, 2016

    VIDEO & AUDIO
    Unlike most films today, Olivier Assayas insisted that Clouds of Sils Maria be shot on 35mm celluloid, and it shows. Criterion’s 2K transfer was made from the original 35mm camera negative under the supervision of cinematographer Yorick Le Saux and was approved by Assayas. The image is beautiful throughout, with excellent color and contrast. The detail is superb, which allows us to thoroughly appreciate the film’s textures and visual nuances, with the scenes in the Swiss Alps being particularly well rendered. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel soundtrack is generally excellent. The dialogue is clean and clear and the use of classical music, particularly Pachelbel, is beautifully rendered with great depth and richness.
    SUPPLEMENTS
    When Paramount released their DVD-only edition in 2015, there were no supplements included, as they were clearly holding out for the Criterion Blu-ray (as many suspected at the time). While there is no audio commentary included here, there are two interview programs that together fill that gap. “Beyond Time” is a new 38-minute interview with director Olivier Assayas (who speaks in perfect English) in which he discusses his career, his previous work with Juliette Binoche, the film’s genesis, and its production. “Parallel Lives” is a new 38-minute program built around separate interviews with Binoche and Kristen Stewart, who discuss working with Assays and their roles in the film. In addition to the theatrical trailer, Criterion has included Arnold Fanck’s full 10-minute 1924 silent documentary Cloud Phenomena of Maloja, which is seen in the film (the accompanying musical track by Sardinian jazz trumpet player Paolo Fresu was recorded live at the Festival della Montagna in Cuneo, Italy, in 2010).

    Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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    All images copyright © Paramount Home Entertainment / The Criterion Collection

    Overall Rating: (3)




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