Clouds Of Sils Maria

As Valentine and Marie argue over their interpretations of the play, it sparks an ongoing discussion about youth, aging, memory, superstition and fame.

It meditates long and hard on questions of age, sincerity, celebrity and love, piling irony on irony. And it features a remarkably natural performance by Kristen Stewart that's so unastounding it's astounding.

Binoche, on whom the camera affectionately lingers, makes herself achingly vulnerable. Though the film feels at times a bit cloudy and enigmatic, it's often fascinating in its juxtapositions.

Brilliant performances aside, "Clouds of Sils Maria" is overlong and much too self-indulgently an "art film." It might have benefited from being just a bit more grounded.

Clouds of Sils Maria is fiendishly wise to the ways of show business, particularly the boxes in which it places women. But the film offers more than that.

The real star turns out to be the play itself: the early masterpiece of a now-deceased writer, a work of such mirrorlike perfection that it reveals entirely different things to different people.

Clouds of Sils Maria is a lot more interesting than just being an arthouse takedown of the mainstream. Unfortunately, director Olivier Assayas is self-aware of this and his movie frequently comes across as too clever for it's own good.

...a movie of many layers, most of which are only partly revealed.

As if Ingmar Bergman were directing All About Eve.

The film is a puzzle, but one you don't necessarily have to solve in order to enjoy it or take something away from it.

Less a narrative than a character study, it's a sometimes-frustrating but nonetheless curious, enthralling experience seeing the very low-key American Stewart do battle with Binoche's elegant, European diva.

Clouds of Sils Maria shows how it is not the movies that change, but how perception of art itself changes.