Clouds of Sils Maria: The Should, the Could and the Empty

Sometimes, it's difficult to accept that we've aged. We no longer are who were were years ago, and we can either accept this or resist it. For women, especially, this is harder because our society places so much emphasis on feminine styles and looks, especially youth or the appearances thereof. So, what happens when an actress is offered the role of the older woman in the play that made her famous years ago when she played the young seductress?

Before I say anything more, let me be frank: Clouds of Sils Maria features some masterful direction, cinematography, acting, screenwriting. However, I can't say that I want to see it again. Why? Because despite how much delicious icing you layer onto a cake in making it look big and delicious, you cannot compensate for a small, plain vanilla center. Juliette Binoche plays said actress, a middle-aged woman named Maria Enders, who really only accepts the part because of the recent passing of the man who wrote the play and gave her a big break. Kristen Stewart plays her personal assistant, Valentine, which makes her the scene stealer of the film as a suppressed and withdrawn young woman with ideas and thoughts that she wants to spread. And this film really is mostly about them and their relationship as they stay in a secluded house in Switzerland, helping Maria to grasp her new role despite her misgivings. The play itself becomes a narrative of their relationship and their questions about it, which reminded me tremendously of recent Best Picture-winner Birdman. However, something about this film didn't quite click.

Despite the praised heaped on this film, I have some complaints. For all intents and purposes, Maria is a woman determined to not accept that her youth is gone, and that doesn't change. We get a very detailed character study of Maria during the final thirty minutes, at which point I had almost forgotten that the film was about her, not Valentine. This is because Valentine is the infinitely more interesting character whom we learn very little about. She gets plenty of screen time and seems to have some secrets, but we'll never know what they were. Just when it seems that Valentine is getting somewhere with helping Maria to transform, that development completely disappears and Maria is back to her old self with some minor changes like accepting less traditional roles. Also, Chloë Grace Moretz's character as a young up-and-coming actress surrounded by controversy seemed criminally underused, and the result was a paper-thin character with limited screen time until she is forced into your focus during those final, disjointed thirty minutes. For such a film with such great production values (beautiful scenery, great dialogue, perfect capturing of facial expressions and body language), the story dies and goes nowhere with a epilogue that literally felt like a completely different film.

For me, the ending of a film is almost as important as the entire film itself. Great movies have risen and fallen based on their endings, and in this case, it fell. Birdman was able to pull off the disjointed epilogue because you knew it was a fantasy, but here, it's simply a few pages that were tacked onto the back of the script. I actually would have been happier if it had ended right before the cut to the epilogue. However, I will say that director Olivier Assayas deserves credit for masterful work that now makes me want to look into his other films, and Kristen Stewart has certainly upended the presumption that she's only that wooden actress from Twilight. Seriously, she deserves an Oscar nomination for this role as an introverted woman who tries to open up to Maria and help her remember what it was like to be young, and how everyone will read a story differently. But if this film is a character study about Maria, then why was I bored by her and dissatisfied with how the film ended up going nowhere?

Verdict: I still enjoyed much of this film, so I will say that you PROBABLY SHOULD see this film if you want an excellent drama with thirty minutes of first world problems tacked onto the end of it.