“Thinking about a text is different than living it.” Internationally renowned European movie star Maria Enders, portrayed by internationally renowned European movie star Juliette Binoche, speaks these words to her personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart, very much the real deal in the role that earned her the first César Award for an American actress). In Clouds of Sils Maria, the new work of self-reflexive dramaturgical brilliance from Olivier Assayas, that difference is often blurred past the point of recognition. Binoche plays a version of herself who contemplates agreeing to play a version of herself in the stage play that made her character famous 20 years before. The central conflict of that play, called “Maloja Snake,” closely parallels the fraught dynamic between Maria and Valentine in its complexity and muted erotic charge. (The real-life rumors of Stewart’s tortured queer sexuality add yet another layer of metatext to the proceedings.) Set to appear opposite Binoche’s Maria in “Maloja Snake” is controversy-embroiled starlet Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz), a clear avatar for Stewart’s tumultuous and highly visible private life. Sils Maria is a dazzling hall of mirrors, and behind each warped reflection stands Assayas, ready with a cocktail and a conversational icebreaker.
The film begins with Maria en route to Switzerland to speak at a function honoring her former director and old friend, only to discover upon her arrival that he’s committed suicide. Thrown into a personal crisis by the shocking news as well as an offer to appear in the “Maloja Snake” revival as the older woman driven to suicide instead of the ingenue role she originated, Maria takes a few days to ponder her next move and drink in the sights with Valentine. And in the Swiss mountains of Sils Maria, there’s plenty to drink in — Assayas could’ve released a 2-hour cut made up entirely of outdoor establishing shots and it’d still be more than worth the price of admission.
Closest in attitude and thematic preoccupations to Assayas’ Irma Vep, Sils Maria benefits from the gift of gab; Assayas never appears more comfortable than when following intelligent, insightful people as they debate the finer points of show business, art, aging, and life. In the film’s richest scenes, Maria and Valentine run lines from “Maloja Snake” and offer their conflicting interpretations of the play and its characters. The film eventually develops a three-tiered framework, using the play-within-the-film to comment on Maria and Valentine, who in turn function as a commentary on the real world beyond the film. Assayas’ intratext-text-metatext system can keep critical viewers busy as they scramble to unpack it all as the film moves along. Beyond that, the film illustrates the fundamental necessity of art as a way to gain an understanding of the world and how we fit in. Maria, aged out of superhero-film range in an industry where the young devour their elders, reckons with reminders of her own mortality through “Maloja Snake.” Art imitates other art, which imitates life, which might just be a pale imitation of art. In Assayas’ universe, where the lines separating fiction and metafiction bleed so freely, it’s hard to tell.
Midway through the film, Maria tells Valentine, “I had a dream last night. The past and the present are blending together.” Her words hang heavy with significance, and she knows it. The “Maloja Snake” script pesters her with unwelcome visions of her youth and a frightening future she hopes won’t come to pass. The final scenes, as enigmatic and ambiguous as Assayas will allow, suggest her fears may not be unfounded. An untested director approaches Maria with an offer to star in a high-concept sci-fi picture. She’s reluctant to take on a film about clones and robots, and his pitch isn’t reassuring her. Their dialogue takes a few turns and ends with a meditation on whether a person must necessarily accept the time they’re born into. Like Sils Maria itself, it’s a bundle of difficult questions with no easy answer. The film knows enough not to pretend otherwise.
