Movie Review - Clouds of Sils Maria

Clouds of Sils Maria **½ (out of 5) (R) Three popular actresses; one tedious script, trying to milk the old play-within-a-play device. Juliette Binoche stars as an aging stage and screen star, pressured to headline in a reboot of the play that spawned her fame 20 years earlier. It featured an older business exec who mentored, then was surpassed, dumped and devastated, by her protégé. This time, the former tutee is asked to play the tutor opposite Chloe Grace Moretz, a tabloid hottie yet to establish her chops as a serious thespian. Binoche spends most of the film preparing by running lines with her young assistant (Kristen Stewart) in pristine Swiss settings (the source of the title), agonizing over her own, and her character’s, lives and natures. Parallels between the play and the players abound. Unfortunately, they’re talked to death long before opening night in London. Their ups, their downs; their smiles, their frowns; our yawns.

The elegant Binoche gets the screen time she deserves, but is forced to spend it on more rambling, repetitive musings about aging than the plot, or one’s patience, could support. As her assistant, Stewart transcends the blandness she’d displayed in the Twilight flicks, but to little avail; although Moretz adds some pizzazz, her first appearance is late in the going, with too little opportunity to reverse the tide. The result is a wealth of on-camera talent wasted by everyone involved in deciding how to nourish and deploy their assets. (5/1/15)