**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Olivier Assayas/Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lars Eidinger and Johnny Flynn
Clouds of Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas' exploration of an aging actresses anxieties and insecurities, is intellectually satisfying and symbolically rich and though not a great film, it commits to stimulating our minds and features some terrific performances.
Assayas' film is a story within a story and his deliberate attempt to dissolve the barrier between the two leaves us wondering if an actress' life and a role for which she is famous have coalesced to form a powerful but disturbing reality.
Inhabiting this role is the venerable Juliette Binoche, an actress with limitless talent who proves to be the most appropriate casting choice; her real-life acting career is also subject to the unforgiving ticking clock the film industry creates for actresses who face obscurity or oblivion in middle-age.
Binoche plays Maria Enders, an actress of international renown who has been offered a part in famed playwright Wilhelm Melchior's play; Maloja Snake. En route to a tribute honoring the literary figure, she learns of his sudden death, which occurred while hiking near his retreat in the Tyrolean Alps.
Maria earned a measure of fame for having played a character in Melchior's famous work; a play (and subsequently a film) about a middle-age female executive who falls in love with a young woman employed in her company. The relationship becomes a psychological melee as the younger woman indulges in manipulative head-games. As her middle-age anxieties leave her emotionally vulnerable, the older woman becomes the younger woman's pawn, which ultimately leads to her suicide.
Maria's performance as the younger woman became a touchstone for other actresses taking on the role. The new production calls for her to play the older woman's part, which she approaches with trepidation. And like the fictitious, mature woman in Maloja Snake, she is feeling acutely aware of her age and is fearful of the role, which she sees as a confirmation of her worst fears.
Maria's personal assistant/friend Valentine (Kristen Stewart), is with her at all hours of the day, reading lines and attending high-profile functions. As the two women rehearse Maloja Snake dialogue, their relationship begins to mirror the play. Assayas ensures the play's dialogue and Maria and Valentine's conversations become almost indistinguishable, thereby creating a continuum where fiction and reality co-exist.
And as the women become emotionally involved in the play-reading, Maria sees Valentine's interpretations of the characters as callow ravings while Valentine begins to reel from Maria's oppressive anxieties.
The title of Melchior's play refers to an uncommon meteorological phenomenon whereby clouds creep through a mountainous Alpine pass like a snake, hence its name. The peculiarity serves as a metaphor (in my interpretation) for the stealthy advance of old age; how it happens upon one like a slithering reptile. To witness the phenomenon is a figurative acceptance of one's mortality.
While the production approaches, Maria and Valentine watch films of the play's co-star, Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz) in preparation. Jo-Ann is a young star who draws tabloidy attention and who sometimes stars in bloated Hollywood blockbusters. Maria and Valentine attend a screening that stars Jo-Ann in her latest movie; a silly super-hero genre flick that may resemble something Maria once performed in in her younger years but now mockingly scorns. While Maria scoffs, Valentine is aware of Jo-Ann's widespread popularity and reminds her that the young actress is now the reality that won't go away.
The film is essentially is three parts. In the first, we see Maria as media darling, her feminine sex appeal still volcanic and vital. In the second, we see her undergoing a physical transformation; she is shorn of her pretty locks; a cosmetic harbinger of sexual decline and a prelude to a literal and metaphorical menopause. And the third, we see Jo-Ann subjected to fierce media attention; fleeing paparazzi and maneuvering her way through a scandal involving her new boyfriend. While the young actress' life is of keen interest to the media, Maria finds herself to be a marginal figure in Jo-Ann's dramas. As we watch the two women seek refuge from paparazzi in an escaping limousine, Maria is almost left behind. The scene is an effective depiction of Maria's inevitable obsolescence as a star and her imminent exile from the media epicenter she once occupied.
Assayas' film is about the terror of growing old and the film industry's low regard for actresses who have reached the middle-age ceiling. It is interesting that Maria isn't able to see the Snake until later in the film, when she finally accepts the wrenching reality of aging.
As the film captures Maria in different stages of aging, the characters themselves represent women in the respective stages: Jo-Ann is as Maria once was; a confident, cocky ingenue maybe slightly contemptuous of her elders; Valentine is the middle-ground between the young and old; one too old to be young and too young to perceive the metaphorical Snake while Maria's middle-age is the final stage; the accelerated slide to dotage.
Binoche is no stranger to nuanced material and she handles it with consummate skill, as we might expect. It is a delightful surprise to see Stewart and Moretz in an Assayas film; their presence shows both actresses are eager to take on more challenging roles and they acquit themselves quite well.
Assayas' narrative structure is compelling and clever; the play within a play within a movie works famously and manages to sustain its coherence.
Though the film is pleasing to the mind, I didn't find it absorbing. It should be seen for Binoche's performance and the interplay between she and Stewart and its astute commentary on the film industry's attitudes about women. The film works but falls well short of greatness, in spite of its ambitions. If nothing else, Assayas can be commended for engaging our minds, if not entirely our hearts.
