822 Clouds of Sils Maria

[ianungstad]

Clouds of Sils Maria



This multilayered, immensely entertaining drama from the great contemporary French director Olivier Assayas is a singular look at the intersection of high art and popular culture. The always extraordinary Juliette Binoche is stirring as Maria, a stage and screen icon who is being courted to star in a new production of the play that made her famous—only this time she must assume the role of the older woman. Kristen Stewart matches her punch for punch as her beleaguered assistant, called upon to provide support both professional and emotional for her mercurial boss. And Chloë Grace Moretz is Maria's arrogant new castmate, a starlet waiting in the wings. An amorphous, soul-searching tale, filled with ethereal images of its Swiss Alps setting, Clouds of Sils Maria brilliantly dramatizes one woman's reckoning with herself and the world.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interviews with director Olivier Assayas and actors Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart
• Cloud Phenomena of Maloja, a silent 1924 documentary by Arnold Fanck that is seen in the film
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Molly Haskell

[Finch]

Clouds of Sils Maria

Looks pretty great. Reviews should be out tomorrow.

IFC are releasing Clouds of Sils Maria later this year according to imdb. I loved the film and hope Criterion add this as another Assayas to the collection in the autumn.

[mfunk9786]

I have very little patience for Olivier Assayas' stodgy vision of showbusiness in Clouds of Sils Maria. It's difficult to get the tone correct when you're devising writers, filmmakers, and actors that don't exist who are supposed to be realistic portrayals of those in the actual public eye, but unlike the masterful and woefully under-seen Beyond the Lights, this film doesn't begin to understand the actual complexities of what it's trying to skewer. Kristen Stewart (who trudges through her underacted role) is given dialogue that, at times, would make Poochie blush (How about that German theatre director? Dude's sick, at least according to TMZ!) and the film relies so heavily on making her the eyes and ears of millenials that by the time she's lavishing praise on a very poorly sent-up science fiction blockbuster's deep emotional truths, you'll want to run for the door and claw at it like an animal trying to get out of its cage.

The film eventually starts to rub it's index finger around the rim of its expensive teacup, wondering aloud whether it wants to be Persona or All About Eve, and it winds up tripping over high concepts (like one that comes right before the epilogue that feels more like an actress running out of time before she has to go and shoot her next movie than an actual plot convention) as it wheezes to the finish line. Clouds of Sils Maria at least has done one thing for me: it made me appreciate some of the gimmickry of last year's backstage chamber drama Birdman - less thematic ambition would have definitely been more here, because what's explored has been done to death before this film, and Assayas doesn't seem to have much more to add despite being convinced that he does. He could've at least whirled the camera around for a while as Binoche smashes up her dressing room, or something. Ah, the unexpected virtue of ignorance.

[The Narrator Returns]

Most of our differences about Clouds would be pointless to hash out, as the most I could say in response to them is "Nuh uh!", but I'd like to say, wow, I absolutely, positively do not agree even the slightest in your assessment of Kristen Stewart and her performance (in fact, your comment is the first one I've seen saying anything even remotely negative about her performance). Also, nuh uh! *blows raspberries in mfunk's general direction*

[mfunk9786]

I don't think Stewart was aggressively bad or even bad at all. I haven't seen her in much, but she always seems very benign and not entirely plugged into what she's doing. There's even a repeat of that infamous ketchup bottle moment from Twilight (when she just sort of shakes a squeeze bottle of ketchup and nothing comes out onto the plate) in this film, early on, when she uses an iPhone upside down. She just never strikes me as being fully engaged with what's going on.

[hearthesilence]

I was surprised myself by the amount of praise lavished on Stewart's performance. She wasn't bad and does more than fine with some awkward lines (in retrospect, maybe we can chalk it up to a native French speaker struggling to create the natural colloquialisms of an American millennial). But I thought Binoche was the real standout, and it's her character and performance that really makes the film.

[Stewart] just never strikes me as being fully engaged with what's going on.

It has to do with two qualities in her physical being: her blank (even oddly expressionless) face and a voice that has a natural dead monotone quality to it. I think she's gotten better at overcoming these obstacles without resorting to overacting though, but it's definitely a liability in many of her performances.

[D50]

I looked at Clouds of Sils Maria as more in line with Summer Hours, in that it was more about the story than any one character or situation, and his mastery of beautifully intertwining nature shots into the narrative - especially in Clouds. At first I could not place

Spoiler

Rosa Melchior, though I recognized her - until it hit me, and I thought of Katharina Blum.

[mfunk9786]

Funny you say that it's about the narrative, because to me it was pretty transparently a character study about Maria (her name's Maria, get it?!). I don't know that the narrative is something that serves any other purpose than very bluntly (I'd say too bluntly) putting her in a situation where she needs to confront her own aging, I don't know that there's any less subtle way of doing so than the construct of the two roles in that play.

I do want to throw in some praise for the cinematography while I'm continuing to post about it, there's some beautiful shots of nature (sort of an easy task when you're surrounded by that sort of splendor, but still) and Assayas and Le Saux shoot Binoche and Stewart with an eye for their physical beauty without going all out Ozon on them - on that note, now I can finally place that shot of a woman lying on a bed in a g-string that I kept seeing in trailers for different film festivals last year!

[mfunk9786]

This is getting a DVD-only release from Paramount.

[RSTooley]

This is getting a DVD-only release from Paramount.

Considering Assayas has been so prevalent on Criterion's social media pages over the last couple of months, I'm still holding onto hope that Clouds of Sils Maria is still, somehow, in the works for a Criterion release.

The fact that it is only getting a standard DVD release (and probably devoid of any special features whatsoever) makes me wonder if IFC is licensing the title to Paramount as a placeholder so that Criterion can prepare a special edition for a later date. I love Assayas, so I can only hope...

[dwk]

IFC Films twitter account confirms a Criterion Blu-ray of Clouds of Sils Maria

[RSTooley]

This has literally made my day! Yes!

[The Narrator Returns]

Yeah, this is really great news, both because I love this movie and because it confirms that the Paramount deal is just a side deal and not a serious competitor to Criterion's relationship with IFC.

[Luke M]

Very happy to hear it's being released by Criterion. I had some hesitations about seeing this flick, in part by some of the comments posted here, but I finally saw it and absolutely loved it.

[CSM126]

Oh thank god. This movie is a masterpiece and I was so sad when Paramount announced their (surely barebones) DVD only release. I look forward to snapping this up asap. I've seen Sils Maria twice and feel as though I'm nowhere near the bottom of it - such a rich, mysterious and beautiful film this is!

[SexualAmbulance]

I'm happy to hear about this, it was one of the better films of last year and it looked like they got all that they could out of the 6.6 mil USD budget. A full length version of "Maloja Snake" would be a great supplement and I think it will be in keeping with the other Assayas releases with a video interview instead of a commentary. My favorite part of the film has to be

Spoiler

the set for the play she is in at the end. I felt that its design made for some of the best shots in the film, including the final one.

[Trees]

I was really enjoying this film until about 2/3rds of the way in, when things started going downhill. The performances were superb all around, including Stewart. I was unfamiliar with this director's work, other than the fact that he is a major Hou Hsiao-Hsien fanboy who has conducted fawning interviews with HHH. In other words, I had no idea about the director's predilections or previous films. At first, this film seemed to be headed toward a poignant friendship/lesbian story dealing with aging and the nuances of art and fame, but instead petered out into pointless pop existentialism. What a shame. Aside from a few early "untrue moments", like Maria using an ipad to watch some corny interview with Chloe on a phony talk show with a terrible laugh track that made no sense, or Stewart's bizarre praise of a superhero movie, the first parts of the film seemed promising to me. But alas, my hopes were never fulfilled.

[Gregory]

Assayas is not a "fanboy" of HHH; they're friends, colleagues, peers.

[Brian C]

As I recall, Stewart's character didn't praise the blockbuster film so much as the Moretz charcater's performance in it, and I thought that was one of the strongest scenes in the movie. To some degree, it's amusingly ironic to put that speech in the mouth of an actor best known for her role in the Twilight series. But it also come across as a legitimately heartfelt defense of art from Maria's dismissive snobbery.

[Trees]

It was also amusing to have Stewart describing the internet scandal machine early in the film, when she herself was caught up in a massive such scandal with a married director. Stewart was fantastic in this picture, I thought.

About halfway into this film, I was really loving it, and thinking to myself, "How does this only have a 6.8 rating on IMDB?...." and then the film started to go downhill and answered that question. The problem keeping this film from being a masterpiece is almost entirely one of story, in my opinion. To me, the acting performances and subject matter were interesting and engaging. But for me, the last 1/3 of the film never lived up to the first 2/3. Even the tone shifted once Chloe Grace Moretz showed up. I guess he's trying to end the film on some Camus-style existentialist note, but to me, it doesn't match the setup of the story. Obviously a writer is free to go any direction he or she chooses in terms of story and plot, we are also free not to like it.

[Numero Trois]

Aside from a few early "untrue moments", like Maria using an ipad to watch some corny interview with Chloe on a phony talk show with a terrible laugh track that made no sense, or Stewart's bizarre praise of a superhero movie,

So having a young character with thoughts of her own is bizarre? Though granted Assayas has made several more or less nuanced statements about superhero movies in the past year.

When I write a discussion between Maria and Valentine about blockbuster superhero movies, I’m on both sides. I agree with both. I am, in a certain way, close to the character of [Maria] because I come from the same place. I’m the same generation. I have a certain ironic distance toward that material. But then it’s also a kind of filmmaking I’ve been fond of. I mean, I enjoy it as a viewer. I don’t think I would touch it as a filmmaker, but I can certainly understand the fun one has with that material, not to mention the admiration I’ve always had for the writers and artists of the comic books. Once in a while, I still do read X-Men comics. I’m just fascinated by the complexity of the narratives and the ambition of the storytelling, which is way beyond whatever they’re doing in the movies. The movies are ultimately an oversimplification of those comic books. They are much more primitive, even if they are very sophisticated in terms of their visuals. I can enjoy it, but I can also analyze it.

Personally I think he's overestimating the merits of the genre but at least he's very much able to convincingly depict someone else's point of view.

I’m surprised no one’s yet mentioned Irma Vep which is the obvious antecedent. Both are equally naturalistic in their depiction of behind-the-scenes show business. “Clouds” is the more layered movie with the bleeding edge contrasts between Maria Enders / Valentine /Jo-Ann Ellis, the play-within-the-movie and the echoes with the actor’s real lives. “Irma” is more straightforward since Maggie Cheung is the sole main protagonist- and ultimately the more inspired work.

[colinr0380]

Or the other Maggie Cheung starring Assayas film Clean, although that is set around the music business than the film world.

Without having seen Clouds of Sils Maria yet, it does sound as if a lot of this is going to be in the tradition of the big themes of Assayas's work - multinationalism (perhaps the blanding out, or homogenisation, of culture on the blockbuster international scale too), role playing (in the sense of performance) and generational issues, in the sense of shifting eras inevitably pushing our characters into something different and that they are more or less prepared, or suited, for. The excitement of finally getting the chance to fulfil your potential set against a nostalgia for the period when you were at your peak, or felt most at ease in the world.

[Trees]

A number of reviews of this film also comment on the film getting weaker as it gets into the "third act".

"At the outset of this English-language French production, one is likely to get the feeling of racing toward someplace fabulous. Everything on the screen is in motion. A hint of hubbub mixes intriguingly with an atmosphere of luxury and glamor. The action takes place in the first-class section of a train.

As it zips through the Swiss Alps, Blueberries and smartphones buzz, bringing important news to important people. The writer-director, Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours), creates the sense that we're at the epicenter of something special and that the destination is sure to prove even more so. Then the whole thing goes off the rails."

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"Clouds of Sils Maria is essentially three different films, and each one in order is a little bit less interesting. But for a while there, for maybe the first 25 minutes or so, it seems that Olivier Assayas has done it again, knocking out a fascinating character study of life in a constantly plugged-in, celebrity-addicted world, and he does it in what I'd call the most unexpected way possible: by putting his whole first act on the shoulders of Kristen Stewart, late of the Twilight franchise and unlikely to ever outlive the memories of all of us who in those days thought she was just the worst thing.

....

It's still better than the aneurysm that the film has when it enters its protracted epilogue, around the day of the final dress rehearsal, and it ceases to be about anything at all but protracting itself out to ruinous, suffocating lengths. But I would not want to spoil things. There's plenty to feel disappointed in throughout that whole middle (the ending, meanwhile, makes me feel outright hate more than simple disappointment)."

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"Then there's the issue of

Spoiler

Val's fate.... This, in my view, is the movie's biggest misstep. Narratively and thematically, it might make sense to remove Val from the movie with about 30 minutes remaining, but Kristin Stewart's absence leaves a vacuum that nothing fills. Intellectually, we may understand Assayas' reasons for doing this but it is a fundamentally unsatisfying choice. Stewart, with her natural, unforced performance, provides us with a window into the bubble of Maria's artificial world. We feel her absence when she's gone. This is Maria's story, to be sure, but in many ways she's the least interesting character on screen. There's something regal and cool about Juliette Binoche's performance. Stewart, having put the unfortunate Twilight series behind her, reminds us why she was so highly regarded in productions like Adventureland and Into the Wild. Although Chloe Grace Moretz brings energy to The Clouds of Sils Maria once Stewart has departed, Jo-Ann is little more than a caricature of a troubled-but-talented starlet."

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[ianthemovie]

I was put off at first by the third act but grew to really like it. Assayas (and Moretz) bring surprising depth to Jo-Ann. Like Maria, up to that point we are led to believe that Jo-Ann is obnoxious, slightly trashy, and neither very bright nor very serious about her craft. But from the moment we see Jo-Ann at the Handel concert with her boyfriend--elegant, poised, immaculately dressed, and able to hold articulate conversation about classical music--her entire character shifts. Her scenes with Maria also show to her be a much smarter and more thoughtful character than we had any reason to believe. True, in the rehearsal scenes she and Maria butt heads. But by that point it has become much harder to write her off. (This creates another parallel with Kristen Stewart, whose own reputation as a serious actress in films like this one has complicated many people's perceptions of her because it runs counter to her portrayal in the tabloids.)

It's tempting to overlook Jo-Ann as the least complex and interesting of the three women but I found her character to be deceptively subtle. By the end of the film, it seemed to me that Maria has also become more grudgingly forgiving of Jo-Ann. I felt that Maria comes to see Jo-Ann as a fellow actress in the full flower of her youth, trying to figure things out personally and professionally, making mistakes, but still human. The irony of that ending is that Maria can't even really hate Jo-Ann--it's really all about her own struggle to come to terms with the passing of time and the ceding of the limelight to a younger generation of women.

[chrisandy]

Phantom pages are now up for this:

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