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By CARA BUCKLEY APRIL 2, 2015
A few years ago the actress Juliette Binoche got in touch with her old friend Olivier Assayas, the French director who had co-written the film “Rendez-Vous,” which slingshot her to fame three decades ago.She told him they should make another film together — a female-centric movie with echoes of one of Mr. Assayas’s idols, Ingmar Bergman, about whom he had co-written a book. Ms. Binoche and Mr. Assayas had worked together on the 2009 ensemble piece “Summer Hours,” but Ms. Binoche wanted more. “It felt to me that we didn’t have the moment to know each other — we didn’t have this time where you could really smell someone, you know?” she recalled.“Yes you’re right, Juliette,” Mr. Assayas remembered replying, “there is something missing in our relationship.”So, over the next few years, between shooting his celebrated film about Carlos the Jackal, Mr. Assayas wrote Ms. Binoche a film, “Clouds of Sils Maria,” opening on Friday. Filmed in English, it tells the story of Maria Enders, an actress grappling with aging and grieving the loss of her mentor. Decades earlier, that mentor had made her a star by casting her in a play as a feckless ingénue, Sigrid, who drives an older lovesick woman, Helena, to suicide.Ms. Binoche is Maria; Kristen Stewart is her American assistant, Valentine; and Chloë Grace Moretz is a fiery young American actress set to play Sigrid across from Maria’s Helena in a restaging of that pivotal play.“I did not want to write a part for Juliette,” Mr. Assayas said. “I wanted to make a movie inspired by Juliette, using Juliette as a character.” He added: “And I went really all the way; one of the layers it kind of works on is the fact that you never lose touch with the fact that you are looking at Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloë Moretz. That’s part of the narrative in a certain way.”Though the film is only now being released, it had its premiere at Cannes last year, when it earned accolades but no awards, and it was shown at theNew York Film Festival last fall. (“Mr. Assayas’s touch is tender, and hisdirection brilliant,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times after its Cannes debut.) Ms. Binoche, Mr. Assayas and Ms. Stewart each sat down separately in New York to talk about the film.While the plot of “Clouds” alludes to “Rendez-Vous,” which ends with Ms. Binoche’s character, a fledgling actress, poised on the cusp of stardom, Ms. Binoche said she didn’t share the near-paralyzing melancholy that grips Maria for much of the film. “There’s something about the past that she’s not in peace with somehow,” Ms. Binoche said over cappuccinos in a corner of the Crosby Street Hotel. “She’s trying to hang onto it; so there’s some kind of passage that she was not able to do where she feels stuck yet totally abandoned.”Luminous at 50 (she has since turned 51), Ms. Binoche came across as a woman at ease with herself. “I’m not saying that aging is not difficult, but I love the present,” she continued. “Every period of time of my life, I’ve been really living it, so not avoiding it, so it doesn’t feel like I missed something.”In “Clouds,” the core relationship, and a complicated one it is, is between the characters played by Ms. Binoche and Ms. Stewart, with nary a leading man in sight, something Ms. Stewart relished. “If you think about the typical relationships that you usually see in movies, even the title of relationships, there’s only a couple of them,” she said. “You’ve got friends, mother, father, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife.” Maria and Valentine are, Ms. Stewart said, “like they’re all of those things — and none of those things — to each other at the same time.”A finely tuned, highly alert presence, Ms. Stewart met to chat in a sun-flooded room at the Trump International Hotel on Columbus Circle, and gazed longingly at the leafy expanse of Central Park across the way. This was one of those days, she murmured, that she wished she could be outside. Of course, if any actress would be recognized in a heartbeat in that tourist-heavy corner of Manhattan, it would be her. This reality of Ms. Stewart’s, amplified by the tabloids’ insatiability about her life, imbued the role of Valentine — who acts as a gatekeeper for Maria, fending off zany, borderline demeaning work requests while helping her navigate the vagaries and vulgarities of celebrity — with a level of satisfaction that Ms. Stewart savored.“I would have jumped at the chance to work with Olivier on anything,” said Ms. Stewart, who late last year won a César (the French equivalent of the Oscar) for her performance as Valentine, becoming the first American actress to win the award. “But the whole industry aspect of it, acknowledging the absurdity of it, I was giddy. I could barely get through the lines without hiding my glee.”Working with Ms. Binoche kept her on her toes, Ms. Stewart said. “She’s like this eccentric, weird, kooky but brilliantly smart and heady, lofty strong woman — she’s rad,” she said. “She’s everything you would want Juliette Binoche to be.”For much of the film, Valentine and Maria spend time in the secluded Swiss hamlet of Sils Maria, where Valentine helps a conflicted Maria prepare to play Helena, which had originally been played by an actress Maria long despised. Mr. Assayas came to know the area on a hiking trip, when he spotted the phenomenon of its clouds, which wind thickly through the mountaintops like a snake. “All of a sudden there was this idea of a landscape, where time was inscribed, which had this cloud which was both beautiful and also menacing,” he said last fall for this article.In the end, after wrestling mightily with herself, as well as with Valentine, Maria finally finds a measure of peace, as she rehearses across from Ms. Moretz’s character and gives in to the younger actress’s interpretation of the role.“The only future she can have is to change herself, and so because of that conflict she grows, and she separates from the past,” Ms. Binoche said. “It touched me so much. This separation, it’s always painful. What’s painful, actually, is the nonacceptance, the resisting is painful. And when we stop resisting, then the magic happens.”
AP:
NEW YORK (AP) — In "The Clouds of Sils Maria," Kristen Stewart's celebrity has been inverted. The paparazzi rush right past her.She plays the efficient, constantly emailing assistant to Juliette Binoche's famed European actress. Reading tabloid stories about a Hollywood starlet (played by Chloe Grace Moretz), she shrugs: "It's celebrity news. It's fun." When she's running through possible roles for her boss, the former "Twilight" star describes one film as having werewolves "for some reason.""I had to seriously harness the glee that was exploding across my face when I was saying some of those lines," Stewart said in an interview. "I don't think that's what the movie is fully about. It's not a commentary about the insane nature of the media in the States, especially. But no one knows about that more than me."Stewart, 24, doesn't seem so much like she's fleeing her teen idol past as she's already long gone, maybe just glancing back, with a wink. "The Clouds of Sils Maria," directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas ("Carlos," ''Summer Hours"), which opens in theaters April 10, is part of a string of recent and upcoming films Stewart has made in a headlong rush."I'm having more fun now than I ever have," says Stewart. "These movies go by (she snaps her fingers). We made 'Camp X-Ray' in 20 days. It's just better when it's faster."The frenetic pace is in stark contrast to the plodding demands of a five-film franchise like "Twilight." The movies now are largely independent, and the roles (like in "Sils Maria") are often supporting or part of an ensemble. She co-starred as Julianne Moore's daughter in "Still Alice" and played a Guantanamo guard in "Camp X-Ray." She's completed a science-fiction romance ("Equals"), a stoner thriller ("American Ultra") and a New York mugging drama ("Anesthesia"). She's been filming Kelly Reichardt's adaptation of Maile Meloy short stories, and she's to co-star in Woody Allen's next film."Because of the lack of expectation of any of these movies, there were no moments that people had read in a book that were the most important thing in their lives," she says, referring to her "Twilight" role. "I really let go."Shew adds she's "gotten a lot better at trusting myself and not thinking that you need to use these nerves and crazy inertia to convince everyone on the set that you're legitimate."Stewart's post-"Twilight" work reveals (or perhaps reminds) that her nature is less as a megawatt star than an actress bent on naturalism, instinct and inquisitiveness. She has basically returned to making much the same kind of indies she made outside of "Twilight": "Adventureland," ''Welcome to the Rileys," ''The Runaways." There's a distinct lack of preciousness in choosing projects or any evident career-building."All my favorite actors are not people that go off and make these characters that are iron-clad perfect," Stewart says. "I want to see people willing to go places they're not determining. You want to see the surprise in people's faces."Assayas approached Stewart for "Clouds of Sils Maria" on the suggestion of producer Charles Gillibert, who had worked with Stewart on the Jack Kerouac adaption "On the Road," also a French production. Stewart says she never got the script ("and in their very French way they didn't call or ask or push"), so the role was cast for Mia Wasikowska. After Wasikowska dropped out, Stewart came aboard."It's really something that you have not seen her in," Assayas said at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film first premiered. "Kristen, whatever image one has of her, ultimately she's just a great actress by any standard."She has certainly won the French over. In February, she became the first American actress to ever win a Cesar, France's top film award, for her performance in "Clouds of Sils Maria."Of the actor-publicist relationship Stewart says: "It's always more complicated than: 'Go get me water.'" Though she's playing a character on the opposite side of fame, it may be the role closest to Stewart herself."It's so not a departure. It's a world that I know so well and that I've observed so much of," Stewart says. "I really wasn't trying to be anyone else."In person, Stewart seems to physically shrink, balled up in a defensive pose, her sleeves pulled over her hands. She never exactly loosens up, but she's animated when talking about her inspirations and her newfound creative freedom.When asked about how "Twilight" changed her, Stewart rambles reluctantly on how it helped her realize she's an actor. But when it's pointed out that it sounds like "Twilight" is far from her thoughts, she quickly nods."Completely. I only have to think about that when someone asks me."
Turns out putting together one French filmmaker, one international grande dame and two young American stars makes for lightning in a bottle. "Clouds of Sils Maria" is an electric combination of self-awareness and emotional exploration told via a story that touches on time, celebrity and meteorological phenomena.Writer-director Olivier Assayas and actress Juliette Binoche have something of a history, because Assayas' first produced feature screenplay was co-writing André Téchiné's 1985 film "Rendez-vous," which made a star of Binoche. They would not work together again until Binoche appeared in Assayas' 2008 ensemble family drama "Summer Hours." After that Binoche asked Assayas to write something for her to star in.He honored her request and came back with "Clouds of Sils Maria," a slippery treatise on identity and artistic persona and the passage of time. Binoche plays Maria Enders, a famous actress who is about to appear onstage in a revival of the play that made her a star. Yet now she will take on the role of a fading older woman while her former part as the seductive young ingénue will go to a tabloid-notorious starlet (Chloë Grace Moretz). Enders' devoted assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) struggles to keep her boss on course while also trying to maintain her own sense of self."We're friends, but it's not like I know so much of her," said Assayas of Binoche at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival. "What is Juliette's day-to-day life? I have no idea. Some part of Maria is based on the Juliette I know, part of it is based on what I fantasize."At some point I realized that one layer of the film was that this is a movie where the identity of the actors is always present," he said. "Usually in movies you forget about them, you're trying to erase as much as you can of whatever the actor is, so that the audience focuses on the character. Here it's the opposite."The film, mostly in English and opening in Los Angeles on April 10, becomes an inside-out variation on "All About Eve" or perhaps a female-centered version of "Birdman," drawing not only on the characters within the drama but also very much on public perceptions of Binoche, Stewart and Moretz. The actresses boldly put themselves, their personas and what audiences know (or think they know) about them into the film itself. That much Binoche, an Oscar winner for "The English Patient" seen recently in the big-budget "Godzilla," was not expecting."I always liked him without really knowing him," said Binoche of Assayas while also in Toronto. "So in a way provoking him to write and do a film together, it was like saying, 'Here I am. Are you ready?'"I think he wrote this, and after that it was like, 'This is my gift, and now you give back.'"After premiering at last year's Cannes Film Festival, the movie went on to a number of prestigious fall festivals, including Toronto, New York and Los Angeles' AFI Fest. Then in February, Stewart became the first American actress to win at the Cesar awards, France's Oscars, picking up a supporting actress prize. (Stewart has another permanent reminder of the role — she had a tattoo put on her forearm for the film inked for real.)"The whole experience has opened me up to a world that has been undiscovered," Stewart said recently by phone in Los Angeles. "There's a willingness to risk that you don't find in American movies. They don't feel planned, they feel accomplished and discovered. It opened something up in me, it was very exciting. I've been working since I was a kid, and this is fresh and exciting and why I love to do it."As the film was coming together, there was one casting configuration in which Mia Wasikowska was to play Valentine and Stewart would take on the other role of, in her words, "the super-scandalous famous person" that would more directly play on her background as star of the "Twilight" franchise. Yet once the cast settled into place with Binoche and Stewart as star and assistant, things forged ahead."There was this really interesting dynamic between Juliette and Kristen that was completely unexpected," said Assayas. "I had no idea it would go that far or they would build on it that strongly. It was something I was a spectator of and gradually encouraged. As long as it didn't break, let's push it further and further."In a scene in a casino bar in the Swiss Alps, Binoche did a spontaneous spit-take at something Stewart said; in another moment Stewart suddenly touched Binoche's face in a disarmingly tender way."It's the kind of thing Kristen would come up with and do it once. Never twice," said Assayas. "She's a very fascinating actress, I must say. I don't think I've ever worked with an actress who has such a consciousness of her body. She has this incredible knowledge of her movements, like a dancer."At the same time she completely opens up and could get into improvised moments. Which is something that doesn't come naturally to her. It's really something that Juliette really brought out of her."In an electrifying series of scenes that form the center of the film, Binoche and Stewart are rehearsing the play at a secluded mountain cabin. It can become unclear if they are speaking as the characters in the play, their roles in the movie, or most intriguingly, as their actual selves, confronting the realities of acting and celebrity.In the role of Valentine, with offhand remarks about teen audiences, werewolf movies and the craft of acting in franchise films, there are moments Stewart in particular seems to be directly addressing the audience regarding her own feelings on the conflict between celebrity and art. In a sense the character is able to say things that the actress playing her cannot."I'm not allowed to say them," Stewart agreed, "but somebody on the outside, they're allowed to speak candidly about something because it's not personal to them. So they won't be condemned for whatever projected ungratefulness. You're standing behind something, but it's very thin, so it's like, 'I still think this.'"And by the way, I had nothing to do with the words, they were fully written before I ever had the part. And Olivier didn't plan on finding someone who has this personal experience with what she's commenting on, it just happened that way. You can see in those scenes I'm stifling joyous laughter."That quicksilver sense of capturing something rare informs the movie all the way through. In a breathtaking moment, Binoche is alone on a mountainside in Switzerland's Engadin Valley as the Maloja Snake, an unusual cloud formation, moves through below.It's easy to imagine a film production waiting on a hillside for days and days for the weather to be just so, though modern audiences may also naturally assume the shot was created through digital effects. Assayas allows there was some trickery involved; while Binoche feels that in the spirit of the movie it is best to leave some things uncertain."I'm not going to reveal the secrets of the snake. I'm not revealing the truth of it," she said. "You have to stay with the poetry of thinking that it's just the right moment. The feminine is a mystery. It has to be."
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