CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: Too Clever For Its Own Good

We all know that mainstream Hollywood loves making movies about show business. Heck, there was an article on this very website recently that outlined the Academy’s obsession with rewarding movies that either celebrate or send-up the showbiz lifestyle. Clouds of Sils Maria is a very different take on that same subject. It is the most art-house friendly depiction of “glamorous showbiz lifestyles” that this writer has ever seen. We’ve seen the trials and tribulations of A-listers countless times before, with the two best recent examples Birdman and Maps to the Stars (the Hollywood-bashing film Clouds of Sils Maria most closely resembles) still fresh in moviegoers’ minds, having been mere months since they were released.

What we haven’t seen is the trials and tribulations of an arthouse starlet, whose artistic integrity when it comes to choosing roles is being constantly undermined by having to take roles in X-Men movies in order to make money. Clouds of Sils Maria is a lot more interesting than just being an arthouse takedown of the mainstream. Unfortunately, director Olivier Assayas is self-aware of this and his movie frequently comes across as too clever for it’s own good. Clouds is a brilliant deconstruction of narrative tropes anchored by three towering leading performances, one that is sorely undermined by the script being too on-the-nose when addressing the overarching themes of the movie. Despite all this, it eventually won me over, leaving me captivated and desperate to see it again.

There’s no business like show business – and no movie quite like this

The ever-brilliant Juliette Binoche stars as Maria Enders, an arthouse darling who begins the movie turning down countless blockbuster roles (such as the villain in an upcoming X-Men movie) whilst on the train to Zurich with her assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart). She’s accepting a lifetime achievement award on behalf of her mentor, theatre director Wilhelm Melchior, who directed her in her breakthrough role as a sociopathic teenage lesbian in a manipulative relationship with an older woman, called “Maloja Snake.”

On the train journey to Zurich, she learns that Melchior committed suicide the night before due to having terminal illness. In the wake of his death, a hotshot young theatre director wants to put on a new adaptation of the play, this time with Maria in the role of the older woman and A-list teen actress Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace-Moretz, finally starring in a movie worthy of her acting talents) taking over the lead role. Maria and her assistant go to Sils Maria, the Swiss alpine village where Melchior lived, in order to prepare for the new adaptation of the play – and the lines between reality and narrative become increasingly blurred.

This blurring of reality and narrative (and never being fully sure whether an actor is playing a role or being themselves) isn’t new ground for Juliette Binoche. The movie constantly brings to mind her starring role in Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s unclassifiable arthouse drama Certified Copy. That movie consists mainly of a conversation between two characters who initially seem to be strangers, yet over the course of a conversation begin appearing to have different relationships with each other entirely. It works best as a narrative experiment that shows how audiences perceive characters when introduced free of context.

Clouds of Sils Maria on the other hand, works as good as a movie as it does a narrative experiment. Yes, it’s best scenes are undoubtably where Binoche and Stewart rehearse scenes from the play, which foreshadows their living situation and is never announced as a recitation of a scene as it plays out in the movie. We only realize they are acting when Stewart announces (among other things) “end of act two.”

It’s the conversations surrounding these scenes that stop me loving the movie as much as others who have seen it. It’s too on-the-nose in its meta-acknowledgement that what is happening to Binoche’s character in the play is foreshadowing what happens to her in real life. I love that the movie acknowledges topics like the execrable show business practice of replacing an ageing actress with a newer, more attractive model. It’s just a shame it can’t be more subtle about it.

What it lacks in subtlety it makes up for elsewhere

A theme the movie deals with far more subtlety is an artist dealing with their obsessions, which gives Olivier Assayas the chance to flirt with multiple different filmmaking styles to suit the personalities and obsessions of different characters. Playwright Wilhelm Melchior moved to Sils Maria because he was transfixed by the haunting imagery of a silent movie shot there, and you can rest assured that the silent movie segment is one of the highlights, with Assayas taking every opportunity to replicate its imagery again in colour at narrative interludes.

On the other hand, young actress Jo-Ann Ellis gets a sci-fi blockbuster of her own (the scenes shown from which make Jupiter Ascending look like 2001: A Space Odyssey in comparison) that shows that she doesn’t necessarily care about acting integrity so much as being famous. This is a movie where every single interlude, be it a silent movie clip, a sci-fi blockbuster, or a woozy psychedelic scene that culminates in nothing more than Kristen Stewart vomiting – show in equal parts the different personalities and obsessions of the characters, as well as Assayas’ versatile talents as a filmmaker.

Even if the screenplay would be improved with more subtlety, the characterisation is at least unique for a film of this type. Clouds has the upper hand over the aforementioned Birdman and Maps to the Stars due to having characters who are believable; the friendship between Binoche and Stewart’s characters is a realistic one seldom seen in movies about A-listers, and they share enough friendly banter together that leaves you hoping the two are best buds in real life.

Stewart has been criticised frequently for being a terrible actress, due to unfortunately being in one of the worst blockbuster franchises of all time. Here, she uses the mannerisms that her critics single out as reasoning for her being a bad actress (the monotone voice, the detached stare), and adds them on to a character who the movie frequently suggests is all surface and no feeling. That she manages to make an emotional connection with the viewer in such a role is surely testament to her acting talents.

Conclusion

Clouds of Sils Maria is a film I ended up wishing I loved instead of just liking. It has three utterly captivating performances, a director realizing every single element of his ambitious vision to a fault, and enough weighty narrative themes to power the entire line-up at the Cannes Film Festival. Yet, the movie could probably be summed up in one scene, that adds up to nothing in the movie but lingered in my mind for a while after viewing; Binoche and Stewart, about to swim in a lake, are talking about the play. As Binoche strips off, she says the line “I would never do what a man would tell me to do,” despite being directed by a man in this scene to take her clothes off, putting the man behind the camera in the position of power. These meta elements populate the movie, leaving me thinking that, as much as I’m happy to see a director with such a precise vision getting his movie to the screen in the way he intended, it still comes across as too clever for its own good.

Have you seen Clouds of Sils Maria? Do you think Kristen Stewart is finally coming into her own as an actress?

Clouds of Sils Maria is released on April 10 in the US and May 15 in the UK. All international release dates can be found here.

(top image source: IFC Films)