Skip to main content

Film Review: "Clouds of Sils Maria"

Image
By

Film Review: "Clouds of the Sils Maria"


                                                



The play's the thing in Olivier Assayas' latest film, Clouds of Sils Maria, which stars Juliette Binoche as an actress preparing to star in a revival of the play that made her famous. The twist is that Binchoce's Maria Enders is playing the older woman of the play, who is driven to suicide by the younger woman, originally played by Maria and now being played a tabloid-friendly starlet (Chloe Grace Moretz). This set-up allows for the film to reflect on the passage of time and how we react to it. It's an interesting subject, and as the parallels between the play and the film, and the film and real life begin piling up, it's clear that Clouds of Sils Maria is operating on multiple levels. 



Kristen Stewart co-stars as Maria's young assistant, Valentine. Much of the film consists of Maria rehearsing her character Helena's lines, with Valentine reading the other part, Sigrid. These scenes take place at a house in the Swiss town of Sils Maria and along hiking trails in the Alps. It's not big on plot, but the characters are so richly drawn, you'll never want it to end. 

The acting is excellent. Binoche delivers a theatrical, calculated, precise performance. Stewart, on the other hand, takes a more modern approach, she's subtle, borderline naturalistic. The films seems aware the different acting styles, and almost comments on them as the lines between the characters in the film, and the characters in the play begin to blur. 

Moretz's character, the star of a science-fiction movie and having an affair with a married novelist, introduces the idea of what a culture values and how that changes over time. This subplot occasionally feels like a distraction to the main story, but Moretz is very good in the role.

Ultimately, more films should focus on less on the plot of the story, and more on what its trying to say. Clouds of Sils Maria, for all its ambiguities and complexities, is a film that knows what its about. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment!

Popular posts from this blog

Spring 2026 Broadway Review Roundup: Every Brilliant Thing, Giant, Dog Day Afternoon, and More

By
ChannelTim must keep up with the times, so I’ve joined TikTok! I am reviewing the New York spring theatre season over there, so go throw a follow my way . For those of you not on that app, I’ll be doing a couple of review roundups here. Below are the scripts for my videos.  Every Brilliant Thing Daniel Radcliffe returns to Broadway in Every Brilliant Thing,  on the very stage where he last appeared, in the Tony-winning revival of Merrily We Roll Along . Whereas Merrily showcased his chemistry with his co-stars, this time around, Radcliffe’s the only credited actor on the stage, although he’s not entirely alone, as Every Brilliant Thing incorporates a good deal of audience participation. Now, I know a lot of you out there are weary of shows with audience participation, I know I am, but here I thought it was not awkward at all, and that wasn’t an easy task considering there are multiple scenes that require these audience members to play character and hit emotional beats. Espe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spring 2026 Broadway Review Roundup #2: Death of a Salesman, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Becky Shaw, and More

By
ChannelTim must keep up with the times, so I’ve joined TikTok! I am reviewing the New York spring theatre season over there, so go throw a follow  my way . For those of you not on that app, I’ll be doing a couple of review roundups here. Below are the scripts for my videos.  Monte Christo It’s no easy task to take a work of 19th literature and adapt it into a musical. For every Les Mis , there are half a dozen Jane Eyre s and Dracula s. But that track record has not daunted the writers of Monte Christo: A New Musical , who approach the source material, The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandra Dumas, with a bewildering combination of pep and disinterest. For a show that was only two hours long including an intermission, there was always going to be a lot of truncation of the plot, and that’s fine, but Monte Christo is also lopsided structurally. Most of act one is is taken up by the set up of Edmund Dantes getting set up, and he doesn’t take on the identity of the Count until ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jim Parsons and Katie Holmes to Return to Broadway in Our Town: Review

By
A champagne problem of mine is that, having grown up in a suburb of New York, my knowledge of the theatrical canon is largely confined to the plays that have been revived on Broadway in my lifetime. And since Thornton Wilder’s seminal Our Town was last produced on the Main Stem when I was four years old, I had never encountered it until I saw Kenny Leon’s new revival, opening October 9th at the Barrymore Theatre. My theatre-going companion, hailing from a Midwestern small town not dissimilar from Grover’s Corners, was intimately familiar with the material via multiple high school interpretations. Despite being an oft produced play, Our Town had eluded me for so long that I was floored by the daringness and perceptiveness of the text when I finally saw it for myself. But that was all that floored me. Remarkably meta-theatrical for a play written in 1938, Our Town is both a play about life in a small town at the turn of the twentieth century and a play about a play about life in ...
Post a Comment
Read more