Cloud of Sils Maria

Title: Cloud of Sils Maria

Director: Olivier Assayas

Writer: Olivier Assayas

Category: Drama

Duration: 123 min

Rate:

During the past year, some directors focused their films on discussing Hollywood's ill obsession with youth and the fear that every actor has of getting old and being forgotten or replaced. Among them, Sils Maria can be considered as a brilliant must-see movie that is able to cleverly represent this fear of the oblivion while describing the fascinating behind the scene of the Hollywood life. 

The film is divided in two parts and an epilogue and it's centred on Maria Enders, played by a mesmerising Juliette Binoche, an acclaimed movie star and stage actor who became known 20 years earlier for her outstanding performance of Sigrid both in the movie and in the play Maloja Snake, written by the Swiss playwright Wilhelm Melchior. 

While she is heading to Zurich to receive an award on behalf of her old friend and director, Maria learns that he passed. Immediately after learning the upsetting news, she is approached by a young and prominent theatre director who offers her the role of Helena, Sigrid's counterpart and older lover, in his remake of the play that made her famous. 

Throughout the movie, she will struggle to accept this flawed character. The refusal to empathise with her is motivated by the fact that Maria still desperately wants to identify herself and be remembered as the young and bold Sigrid. She can't bare the fragility of this character, including her need to be loved by Sigrid, and finds it difficult to connect with her during the rehearsals with her assistant Valentine - played by Kristen Stewart who won a Cèsar award for the performance. 

What makes Assayas' work interesting is the ever present parallels between stage and reality. Throughout the second part of the film, there is an evident comparison between Maria's struggle with the inexorability of the passing of time and her codependent relationship with Valentine with Helena's fear of getting old and needing Sigrid's love to prove to herself that she exists. The use of this symmetry makes it difficult even to recognise if Maria and her assistant are reciting the lines or talking about their relationship. 

Moreover, what made it extremely intense is that the real protagonists are the characters' emotions. Even in this aspect there is a duality represented by the conflict between youth and old, reality and play. The evolution of each character is slow and steady, matching the pace of the film. At the beginning Maria appears as confident, with a comfortable and natural relationship with Valentine.

However, in the end she becomes Helena, encompassing her insecurity, fragility and fear of losing the superficial power that youth and beauty can give. This same fear is represented even by the relationship she built by Jo-Ann Ellis, the young and wild actress who is portraying Sigrid in the new adaptation of the play. 

All in all, the film in its entirety is a strong poetic metaphor for the Hollywood actors' fear of the passing of time and not leaving a powerful memory of themselves. Time becomes like the Maloja Snake - the phenomena always mentioned throughout the movie, even with the historical footage Cloud Phenomena of Maloja by Arnold Fanck (1924) - visible from Sils Maria, in which the clouds slowly spill out in the valley covering everything up, just like youth slowly disappears covered up by old age. 

Till next time, 

Fred. 

Here's the trailer: