Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Olivier Assayas
    Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz,
    Lars Eidinger, Angela Winkler, Johnny Flynn
Parallel characters in parallel relationships get all tangled up in an ambitious, ambiguous psychological study starring Juliette Binoche as a middle-aged actress and Kristen Stewart as her assistant. Maria Enders (Binoche) once played the younger role in a play about two women. Now, in a revival, she's playing the older one. The director tells her the key to the piece is that the two characters are the same woman. So you've got the relationship between the two women in the play. And the parallel relationship between Maria and Stewart's character, an efficient, brutally insightful 20-something named Valentine. The relationship between Maria and Chloë Grace Moretz  as the headline-grabbing younger actress in the revival. A case of off-stage suicide that haunts both productions. And the fact that Maria now identifies with both characters in the play. A lot of this was shot in the Swiss Alps, and a lot of it involves Valentine helping Maria run her lines, the lines in the play and the words they exchange outside of it running together to become indistinguishable. There's a little bit of Bergman in this, a puzzle to wrap your head around, and a supportive and sometimes testy workout for Stewart and Binoche.