Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloe Grace Moretz
Distributor: Other
Runtime: 124 mins. Reviewed in May 2015
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This film has received international awards for best film, and best supporting actress (for Kristen Stewart). It is a French production, with English dialogue, and it explores the relationship between Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche), an middle-aged French actress, and her young American assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart). Both become involved in a revival of a play, called “Maloja Snake” under the (fictional) authorship of Wilhelm Melchior.
Divided into two parts and an epilogue, the film largely takes place in the picturesque village of Sils Maria in Switzerland. The phenomenon of the Maloja Snake is a long thin trail of cloud that heralds to villagers in Sils Maria that disturbing weather is approaching. The title of the film is a metaphor for the drama unfolding within the movie.
Maria is an international star, famous for the role she played long ago as a young girl in both stage and film versions of “Maloja Snake”‘. The original play told the story of a tempestuous relationship between a “disruptive and unpredictable” young girl and an older “alone and vulnerable” woman. The older woman suicides after being scorned by the younger woman.
In real life, Maria is approached by a popular theatre director to appear once more on stage in his production of the original play, but this time the request is for her to play the older woman. Valentine (Kristen Stewart) works assiduously by Maria’s side to help her cope with the changed role. A young American actress, Jo-Ann (Chloe Grace Moretz) is hired to take Maria’s former part as the young girl, and the director wants a “a new take” on the original play.
As Maria and Valentine read through the play together, they become uncertain of their own relationship, and what occurs between them starts to mirror the dramatic themes of the play itself. Words said from the play become words which describe their relationship. The half-affectionate interplay between Maria and Valentine slowly develops into a complex, psychological relationship between the two women. In the original play, Maria played a young temptress who seduces and then abandons her older female boss. In the version being planned, Maria is facing a role she doesn’t really understand – a woman scorned – and the role unsettles her. The film not only reverses the role Maria is used to, but it exposes her as an ageing actress to the ambitions of Jo-Ann, who is hungry for Maria’s past fame.
Melchior dies unexpectedly, and Maria and Valentine retire together to the Swiss Alps to Melchior’s house to rehearse for the new play. As the personal relationship between Maria and Valentine progresses, it is affected both by the role Maria is preparing to perform in the play, but also by Valentine’s efforts to help Maria personally realise the demands that are on her. Valentine tries to get Maria to face her fears. Maria is insecure at losing what she knew she once had, and Stewart embodies what Binoche’s character, Maria, most fears – the loss of youthful energy that helps to make an actor on stage the centre of attention.
This film creatively takes the story of the play, and imbeds it in real-life. It is a movie that addresses the subtleties of shifting relationships and role playing in an intelligent, analytical way, and its dramatic impact depends heavily on the dialogue that Olivier Assayas, the Director of the movie, establishes between his main characters. Assayas is known for his probing direction of films like “Something in the Air” (2012) and “Summer Hours” (2008). Characteristic of his work, this is a multi-layered, moody movie with particularly strong performances by its two main actresses (Binoche, and Stewart).
By the nature of what it is, this movie presents the viewer with a virtual master-class in acting. It requires very good acting to convey an insecure actor very well, and Binoche rises wonderfully to the challenge. She is more than ably supported by Stewart acting someone who knows the weaknesses of a performer. And the movie taunts us provocatively throughout with the question: Is the young woman and the older woman, really “one and same person”?
Both Binoche and Stewart explore brilliantly the subtleties and growing complexity of a relationship between them that develops in real-life as the film progresses. The film convincingly blurs the dividing line between life and role-play and is particularly well scripted, acted and directed. This film is quality-viewing, and is a very absorbing movie about the vagaries of fame, shifting relationships, the art of acting, and the pitfalls of ageing.
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