Clouds of Sils Maria

In July 2022, I watched Clouds of Sils Maria for the first time on the television set. The drama film was released in 2014 starring Juliette Binoche. Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz acted in it.

It follows Maria, a veteran actor and important figure, who will appear in a stage drama that was played more than twenty years before and is decided to be done again. She had acted the role of a daughter in it but she is going to do the role of her mother. She starts to prepare for and focus on the role with her young manager, Valentine. Then Jo-Ann, an up-and-coming but controversial actor, is going to do the role of the daughter costarring with Maria.

Stewart Valentine gave a sharp, realistic and wonderful performance as Maria's young manager, Kristen, who fearlessly says her remarks to Maria preparing for the role. A generation gap also might cause the difference between their ideas of the one. Their footings realistically change again and again through the arguments, which made me feel that actors keeping on starring in films would sincerely face their roles like that. Moreover, I felt that actors' jobs are really hard, for I thought that ones who just memorize their lines, confirm the director's intention in the rehearsals and seriously play only in the shootings would be eliminated unless they are gifted ones.

I first saw Juliette Binoche, the lead in it, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I then was kind of amazed how pretty baby face she has like Maria de Medeiros who performed the girlfriend of the boxer done by Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction and Valeria Golino who did the partner of the car dealer done by Tom Cruise in Rain Man because most Western women who I had viewed looked to be adult and mature. However, come to think of it, Sally Field, Diane Keaton and Cameron Diaz, in addition, Cary Marigan and Ana de Armas in recent years have beautiful baby faces as well. I had simply thought that baby face beauties are only Japanese until then. That was just my bias. I thought that Binoche was still pretty, was a balanced adult and aged gracefully when I watched her again in Chocolat that Johnny Depp also acted in. She was still lovely and charming as she was younger in the 2014 flick.

Chloë Grace Moretz also gave a good performance as a young impertinent and controversial actor named Jo-Ann who uses violent language and has an affair.

Although the two young actors both attracted me and had presence, yet Juliette Binoche were more fascinating, after all, because of her more various expressions.