Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

A film star comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself while starring in a revival of the play that launched her career.

Director:

Olivier Assayas

Writer:

Olivier Assayas

Stars:

Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz

19 wins & 42 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Juliette Binoche	...	Maria Enders
Kristen Stewart	...	Valentine
Chloë Grace Moretz	...	Jo-Ann Ellis
Lars Eidinger	...	Klaus Diesterweg
Johnny Flynn	...	Christopher Giles
Angela Winkler	...	Rosa Melchior
Hanns Zischler	...	Henryk Wald
Nora von Waldstätten	...	Actress in Sci-fi Movie
Brady Corbet	...	Piers Roaldson
Aljoscha Stadelmann	...	Urs Kobler
Claire Tran	...	Maria's London Assistant
Stuart Manashil	...	Maria's Agent
Peter Farkas	...	Journalist in Zürich
Ben Posener	...	Journalist in London
Ricardia Bramley	...	Talk Show Host

Storyline

The first real professional success for famed French actress Maria Enders was twenty years ago as the co-lead in writer Wilhelm Melchoir's play and subsequent movie "Maloja Snake", he who picked Maria, then an unknown, personally. She played Sigrid, an opportunistic eighteen year old in an emotionally dependent lesbian relationship with forty year old Helena, who was at a vulnerable stage of her life. Maria has turned down the play's upcoming London revival in which she would now play Helena, it remounted by director Klaus Diesterweg. Her reasons for turning down the role are many including: being at a vulnerable stage of her own life going through a painful divorce; remembering the suicide of Susan Rosenberg, the original Helena, following the original run of the play, the suicide purportedly mirroring what happens to Helena; and the painful memories of the production in still having hard feelings toward who was her older male costar, Henryk Wald, with who she had an affair at the ...

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Plot Keywords:

female pubic hair | female full frontal nudity | nudity | female nudity | pantyhose | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language and brief graphic nudity

Details

Official Sites:

Juliette Binoche: The Art of Being - Official Fansite Official site [Japan]

Country:

France Germany Switzerland

Language:

English French German Swiss German

Release Date:

20 August 2014 (France)

Also Known As:

Sils Maria

Filming Locations:

Sils-Maria, Kanton Graubünden, Switzerland

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$61,810, 12 April 2015

Gross USA:

$1,851,517

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$4,728,401

Company Credits

Production Co:

CG Cinéma, Pallas Film, CAB Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

124 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX

Color:

Color Black and White (archive footage)

Aspect Ratio:

2.40 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The French fashion house Chanel supplied the actresses with clothes, jewelry, accessories and makeup, while also providing some of the budget to allow Olivier Assayas to fulfill his dream of shooting the movie on 35-mm film instead of digitally.

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Goofs

In the opening, the characters are riding in what is clearly a second-class rail car. This would be completely out of character, given what we see later in the movie.

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Quotes

Valentine: It's theatre. It's an interpretation of life. It can be truer than life itself.

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Crazy Credits

During the closing credits, four of the actors are shown under the heading "guest appearance by".

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Connections

References Forbidden Planet (1956)

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Soundtracks

Kowalski
[by Primal Scream]
Written by Bobby Gillespie, Andrew Innes, Robert Young, Martin Duffy, and Mani (as Gary Mounfield)
Performed by Primal Scream.

User Reviews

move forward, not back

Greetings again from the darkness. Most of us don't spend much time re-living our past, and we certainly don't go through the emotional turmoil of analyzing our early lives from a different perspective. This story puts actress Maria (Juliette Binoche) in those shoes and then we watch as she fights, claws and battles her way through.

Maria is a well-respected veteran actress who has been offered a role in the revival of the play that made her a star more than 20 years earlier. The play was written by her mentor, who dies suddenly as she is on her way to visit. Hotshot director Klaus (Lars Eidinger) wants Maria for the role of the older woman, and this is difficult for Maria to accept since she played what she considers the far more interesting younger woman in the first version. Internal psychological warfare breaks out.

Maria's personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) struggles to keep Maria informed of today's world – celebrity gossip is especially key in their conversations. They also run lines together, and the parallels between the play and their real lives are so prevalent that the lines are often blurred between written word and spoken word. Things get really dicey when Jo-Ann (Chloe Grace Moretz) enters the picture as the talented, extremely popular, personally out of control actress slated to play opposite Maria in the play.

These three actresses are exceptional … yes, even you Kristen Stewart haters will be impressed. They each bring extraordinary depth to their role, and all are a bit outside of what would be considered their comfort zone. Their exchanges are fun, but what's not said is every bit as exciting and key.

Filmed in the Sils Maria area of the Alps, the landscape is beyond breathtaking. Maloja Snake is the title of the play, and it refers to the fantastic cloud formations that snake through the peaks and valleys of this marvel of nature. The scenery is a nice complement to the emotional rides each of the characters take, and writer/director Olivier Assayas ensures that we have no shortage of talking points after the film.