602 - Clouds of Sils Maria, France, 2014. Dir. Olivier Assayas.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

602 - Clouds of Sils Maria, France, 2014.  Dir. Olivier Assayas.

Cloud Phenomena of Maloja.
Its harbingers.
The clouds wind up the Maloja Pass.
The so-called Maloja Snake.

Rosa is showing Maria footage from the 1924 silent documentary film Cloud Phenomena of Maloja by Arnold Fanck, with subtitles.  Maria's personal assistant Valentine looks on while leaning in the doorjam behind them.  She shows interest.  She moves forward to get a better look.

The baroque orchestra plaintively plays Handel's Largo de Xerxes underneath.

Rosa explains to Maria, "Wilhelm was fascinated with this film.  He used to marvel at the fact that  the true nature of the landscape revealed itself in these images."

Rosa is Wilhelm's recent widow.  The playwright Wilhelm Melchior.

Wilhelm Melchior gave Maria her first big role twenty years ago.  He gave her a career.  He made her a star.  She has always felt grateful.

So grateful, in fact, that when they hear of his death, Maria and Valentine continue on to Zurich anyway, for Maria to give a speech in his honor and to receive an award on his behalf.

Henryk Wad is present.

Henryk is a man Maria cannot stand.  She says.  She slept with him when she was 18 and they were working on a film together.  But she later felt she was too young to understand what she was doing, and he took advantage.  A few years later, she says, they working on a film together again.  By the time the third film came around, she was a star and suddenly he was interested

But Maria loved Wilhelm Melchior.  He gave her her career.  He was a warm and generous man, as well as a genius.  She reveals to Valentine, after they have been drinking, that she was in love with him but she knew that their professional, working relationship was too important to risk losing over desire.

If only he had lived.

Valentine has invited hot young director Klaus Diesterweg to meet with Maria.

He meets with her.

He offers Maria to play the older woman Helena this time around and to allow a newcomer to play Maria's original role, the character Sigrid.

The newcomer will be Jo-Ann Ellis, a girl with classical training and a theater background who has just done a superhero movie.  She respects Maria Enders and is willing to give up her other commitments to work with her.  He says.

Rosa invites Maria and Valentine to stay in the Melchior house, in the hills above the Maloja Pass, while Rosa leaves to grieve away from home and its memories.

Valentine proves to be a good rehearsal partner as well as a personal assistant.  She too memorizes her lines.  The women speak them during both formal rehearsal times and while going hiking and swimming.  They move back and forth between the lines and their own speech so that the distinctions between characters and real people become blurred.

They are living their roles.


And as Jo-Ann arrives to play Sigrid, Valentine transforms into Helena

As the clouds roll by.


Juliette Binoche had her break-out role(s) in 1985 in a movie Olivier Assayas co-wrote.  She played Nina / Anne Larrieux in Andre Techine's Rendez-vous.

23 years later she worked with Assayas again, in his ensemble drama Summer Hours (2008).  Which we have seen.

Now nearly 30 years after their first movie together, Ms. Binoche is starring in Olivier Assayas' film Clouds of Sils Maria.

Kristen Stewart has had a stellar career in a short amount of time.  Everyone knows her as Bella Swan from the Twilight series, but she also had a career as a child actress and has played a wide range of characters in a good number of independent and studio films.






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I'm sick of acting hanging from wires in front of green screens.

He chose an unknown 18-year old actress.

In two months of shooting he gave me everything I needed to build a career on.

The cockroaches must have taken a later train.

I have to say my first reaction was to turn right back.

I can't deal with this; it's impossible.

So he was like in love with you or something?
Not at all.  He was just furious I didn't gie in to him.

Look it up in the internet.
I thought we despised the internet.

But I try to be more elegant today.

The less he understands, the better he is.  When he understands nothing, he's excellent.

We had an affair when we were shooting Maloja Snake.
Yeah, I couldn't tell.
I was 18, kind of dumb, and he really took advantage.  After the shoot I never heard from him, and it destroyed me.
I'm sure you've run into him since.
We made another film together afterwards.
Which one?
Oh, you don't want to know.  Tolstoy adaptation.  German producers.  Who cares?  About ten years later I was famous.  Then he was interested.  And he kept harassing me, calling me in the middle of the night.  I didn't give in, and that he hated, and he made me pay for it every single day of the shooting.
He was really amazing in that one movie, um, what was it called?  He plays a Soviet defector with missile codes and s---.  Do you know it?
No idea.  No, I don't know.  Never heard of it.
He's great in it.  So intense.  Especially in the more physical scenes.  That stare.  He is like, I like him.
Yeah, I kind of got it.
I mean, as an actor I really like him.

It's great to celebrate his work, especially today.

I played Sigrid in Maloja Snake when I was 18.  For me it was more than a role.  In some way I am still Sigrid.
That's my point.  Sigrid seduces Helena.
And it has nothing to do with being a lesbian, by the way.  I've always been straight.
That's not at all what I meant.
Sigrid is free beyond everything, and most of all she is destructive, unpredictable.
I know.
And right or wrong, I've always identified with that freedom.  It's a way of protecting myself.

And for you, Helena embodies that opposite?
Helena's 40.  She runs a company.  She falls head over heels in love with a girl who doesn't love her.  And commits suicide.  Yes, she's completely the opposite.
But, what is it that attracts Helena to Sigrid if they are so different.
It's obvious.  Her youth.
'
If you're telling me I'm Helena's age now, yeah, you're right.  It's true.  But that doesn't mean I can play her.
The way I see Helena is totally different.
She's not the epitome of order.
Sigrid revives tis hidden violence in Helena.
Was it hidden or tamed?  Time's gone by and she can't accept it.  Me neither, I guess.
There's no antagonism.  It's the attraction of two women with the same wound.  Sigrid and Helena are one and the same person.  One and the same person.  That's what the play is about.  And because you were Sigrid, only you can be Helena now.
You know as well as I do that William Melchior had been working on a sequel for years.
Yes, but it was about Sigrid at 40 years old.
No, it was about Sigrid 20 years later became Helena.
So, who's gonna play Sigrid?

The role scares me.  The role scares me.  I'm in the middle of a divorce.  I feel alone and vulnerable.
If you refuse, I understand, but it will be a missed opportunity, especially for William.
I should get going.

I have another reason.
Susan Rosenberg.  She played Helena with me.  She died in a car accident a year after.  It's a superstition.  I've always associated her death with a Helena suicide.
She was a lousy actress who didn't understand a thing about the role, and her conventional style of acting highlighted the modernity of your performance.  You should be grateful to her.

Helena's love for Sigrid makes her stupid, and blind to what everybody in the audience can see right away. . . .
I think your reading is simplistic.  I know Sigrid, and believe me, she's more interesting than that.  Yes, she takes advantage of Helena.  Yes, she fascinates her, and she knows it.  Well, you can decide not to look any further, but I had to because I played her.  You're just talking about what's on the surface.  The play is about what attracts them to each other, and it's harder to see and it's more profound and truer.  The impossibility of their relationship is as cruel for Sigrid.
I'm sure she'll get over it.
What do you know?
Time.  Youth.  She has her life ahead of her.
Well, Helena's young too.  I mean, she's not old.  She has her life ahead of her too.  But she decides to give it all up.
Helena's not used to be turned down.  She discovers her own frailty and she can't accept it.

I had a dream we were already rehearsing and the past and the present were blending together.  I'm confused.
No kidding.

He is a sick director.  Jo-Ann's a superstar.  It pays well.
I don't need the money.

Stay as long as you want.  I like the fact that you are working on the part here where it was written.
You promised no ghosts.

Is that the Maloja Pass, right there?  The snake?

I was fine with just feeling attraction. . . . Anything more would have endangered our relationship, which my intuition told me was much more important than desire.

Maybe I only remember what suits me to remember.

There are werewolves involved, for whatever reason. - Valentine, played by Kristen Stewart.

I didn't know you at 18, but I'm almost positive Jo-Ann's a lot worse.

I think she probably got jealous of Hollywood trash.  TMZ deemed her the A-list actress that dreampt of making it to the Z-list.

You could have told me sooner.
You despise internet gossip.
This is not gossip; it's information.
It's celebrity news.  It's fun.
I thought you liked her a lot.
I do.  I love her.  She's not completely antiseptic like the rest of Hollywood.
You just said she's a self-destructive crazy girl.
I didn't say that.
Sorry, I must have misunderstood then.
She's brave enough to be herself.  At her age, I think that's pretty f-ing cool.  I think she's got a bright future.  In fact, I think she's probably my favorite actress.
Oh.  You mean more than me.
No.  I didn't mean that.

Defeated by age, by her insecurities.

This poor woman is ready to kill herself before the play even starts.  She's using Sigrid as a weapon.  That's how.

I'm Sigrid.  I want to stay Sigrid!
Sigrid is 20.
I don't care.  I know I'm right.  It doesn't interest me anymore.

If you find my view uninteresting, I don't really know what I'm doing here.  I can run lines with you, but I don't really see the point.  You can find anyone to do that.

All I'm saying is that thinking about a text is different from living it.  It's nothing against you.

You hate the play and you hate her.  You don't have to take it out on me.  I'm just doing my job.

I don't know why I should be helping to bring it to life.
I bet you weren't saying stuff like this when you were playing Sigrid.
I was a kid when I was playing Sigrid.  I wasn't asking those kinds of questions.
Like Jo-Ann and her science fiction film?
Yeah, probably.
Don't you want to get that innocence back?
You can't get innocent twice.
You can.  If you just accepted Helena the way you accepted Sigrid.  Obviously, it's easier to relate to strength rather than weakness.  Youth is better than maturity.  Cruelty is cruel.  Suffering sucks.  She's mature and she's innocent.  She's innocent in her own right.  That's what I like about her.

You didn't answer me.  You have your interpretation of the play.  I think mine's just confusing you.  It's frustrating me.  It's uncomfortable.  It's not good.
Stay.
No, no.
Please, stay.  I need you.