clouds of sils maria

I went to the Watershed cinema for the first time in what seems like ages yesterday to see Olivier Assayas’s film “Clouds of Sils Maria” featuring Juliette Binoche (Maria Enders) and Kristen Stewart (Valentine). For me, Binoche is the film equivalent of music’s Joni Mitchell and, although I might be slightly biased(!), I thought her performance was absolutely mesmerising. Just wonderful. The film has vague autobiographical links with Binoche’s own career – Assaysa had kick-started her stardom in the mid-80s as co-writer of “Rendez-vous”. She plays a famous French actress whose big break was playing the young lead role in a play 20 years ago. Now she’s given the opportunity to star in the revival of the play, only this time as an older woman opposite the character for which she became known.

Stewart plays the part of Maria’s intelligent, on-the-ball, techno-savvy, personal assistant and is quite, quite brilliant. They hide themselves away in the recently deceased playwright’s Wlhelm Melchoir’s Alpine home to undertake line readings of the play, “Maloja Snake” (where he wrote the play – a reference to the cloud formations that occasionally snake through the valley). As they do so, their relationship begins to mirror and complicate that of the women in the play…
I think you need to see it!