Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) [Criterion Collection]

Director: Olivier Assayas
Writers: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz

At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take on the role of Sigrid, and Maria finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an ambiguously charming woman who is, in essence, an unsettling reflection of herself.




Extras DVD1:
- Trailer



Extras DVD2:
- Olivier Assayas: Beyond Time:
This lengthy chat with the director, speaking in English, matches the quality of Criterion's previous releases: elaborative and paced deliberately, properly spaced out with clips from Clouds of Sils Maria an other films. He discusses working with Juliette Binoche and his writing process, the things that go untouched by the passage of time, and the parallels between his film and Ingmar Bergman's Persona. He then gets to the meat of the film itself, discussing how he wanted the feel of picking up in the middle of a story during the opening train sequence and how Assayas landed on Kristen Stewart as the supporting actress, as well as the chronology of the shooting schedule. It's an interesting chat that sports that nice flow Criterion has become so good at from general discussion about the filmmakers' origins to the nitty-gritty about the focal film itself.
- Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart:
Parallel Lives - Fiction and Reality in Clouds of Sils Maria. The interview time with Binoche and Stewart is chopped up and edited together into somewhat correlating topics, delving into how they got started with Assayas with the film's conception, the origin and presence of their characters, and eventually into the experienced all three actresses have shared in their places among pop-culture. Binoche also discusses her characters weight and the revealing swimming scene, while they both touch on their deeper outlooks on the themes touched upon in the characters, as well as strong female figures in general and discussing the freer-form nature of Assayas' process.
- Cloud Phenomena of Maloja
The Criterion Collection have also included the short 1923 documentary Cloud Phenomena of Maloja, from which footage was taken and used in Clouds of Sils Maria.