Olivier Assayas's entertaining backstage melodrama applies the balm at the end of the 67th Cannes film festival. Over the past 10 days, the visiting dignitaries have been subjected to scenes of alcoholism and torture, incest and jihad. Clouds of Sils Maria, however, is here to right the applecart and reaffirm core principles. It tells the guests that great art is worth the struggle and that actors are a noble breed, a cut above the hoi-polloi. Small wonder they saw the thing off with such a round of applause.
If Assayas's film finally falls just shy of being great art itself, it is at least handsomely staged and played with conviction; like a lush A-list revival of skimpy B-list material. Juliette Binoche headlines as Maria Enders, a luminous talent in early middle-age who once rose to fame playing 18-year-old Sigrid in a lauded lesbian drama. Now a hotshot director wants to restage the play, this time casting Maria in the role of Helena, the bitter, brittle older lover. Maria is reluctant but the director insists. "Sigrid and Helena are one and the same person," he explains. "And because you were Sigrid, only you can play Helena."
Continue reading...Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/23/cannes-2014-clouds-of-sils-maria-review-juliette-binoche
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