Tale of the snake

Clouds of Sils Maria

Crit

Stuff I didn't suspect going in:

1. that the terminal s in Sils is vocalized.
2. how shocking the word "fuck" can still be when Juliette Binoche says it. I think it could have been a sharper slap in the face only if one of my grandchildren had said it.
3. how deeply I would love this flick.
4. how much this flick would make me laugh.

It's a film about acting, and it's a metafilm about acting: Binoche's Maria and her assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) run lines for the play that made Maria's career 20 years earlier and in which she has reluctantly accepted the role of the older woman undone by the femme fatale she played in her youth. But Binoche and Stewart are also running lines for this movie--their interplay is invigorating, reminiscent of Billie Jean King rallying with little Chrissie Evert, with both players committed more to the game than to winning the point, without ever losing sight of the fact that winning the point makes the game a little sweeter. One of the many things this is is a great buddy movie.

Except. Except as much as Maria and Valentine want to be buddies, there are imbalances--maturity and youth, employer and employee--and there are erotics attached to those imbalances that undermine any possibility of any innocent buddy relationship.

And then something happens at the end of the second act that simultaneously changes and confirms everything. The change sucks much of the oxygen out of the final act, but the loss is a perverse gain as well. The year is only a third over, but I'd be surprised not to be highlighting this as one of the year's best come New Year's Eve.