822 Clouds of Sils Maria

[domino harvey]

Coming in June

[Ribs]

Don't really see the point of Criterion putting this out instead of Paramount if that's all they can muster bonus-wise.

[domino harvey]

They also bewilderingly sat on it for months too. I don't get it, I should've just imported the UK disc instead of waiting (though now I might as well get this edition)

[knives]

In that case we can pretend that this is a Fanck spine that has Assayas as an extra. I think it is pretty big news that they're releasing his film.

[Ribs]

I guess there's a chance the interviews are substantial, hour-long things, but even still it's a generally pretty dull package exacerbated by its present lack of a cover.

I don't really think a ten-minute public domain thing is a release-making extra but it's nice that it's there.

[tenia]

I almost was disappointed to have bought the French release a few weeks ago, but seeing the content Criterion ended up putting, the disappointment disappeared.

[The Narrator Returns]

We're missing the big picture here, which is that this breaks the long streak of Criterion releases of Juliette Binoche films without any new input from Juliette Binoche.

[movielocke]

I'm curious about the bonus film, is it just a short doc? anyone seen it?

[Minkin]

Its a 2disc DVD, so either more is being added or the interviews are rather lengthy.

[knives]

I'm curious about the bonus film, is it just a short doc? anyone seen it?

It's a ten minute doc whose importance is pretty exclusively with who directed it.

[Tommaso]

It's pretty nice, though. Typically impressive mountain scenes and cloud studies, Fanck-style. But didn't Kino release it already as an extra on one of their Fanck discs? Most likely CC's version will be the one that aired on arte one or two years ago, though. That is, newly restored and with a great semi-ambient score by Italian trumpet-player Paolo Fresu (if I remember correctly).

[flyonthewall2983]

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Are we supposed to believe that Valentine died in the mountains, or she just threw up her arms, said "fuck this" to herself and left?

[mfunk9786]

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Left. Which is one of a heap of absurdities here considering where they were.

[Sloper]

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Here's my take on it. They'd just been discussing the fate of Helena in the play: I don't remember the details, but it's something like she wandered off in some remote place and wasn't heard from again. Maria insists this is a clear-cut indication of suicide; Valentine says it's more open-ended, and that Helena might just have gone off to re-invent herself. When Valentine disappears, it's at a moment, and in a part of the hills - just in the dip between two slopes - when it seems like it would be hard for her to run off without Maria noticing, but it's also not obviously treacherous terrain where she would be likely to fall to her death. There is no plausible, realistic way to account for her disappearance. Earlier, Maria offended Valentine by saying that she couldn't really understand the play's characters, since she hadn't 'lived' them as a real actor would, and as Maria has 'lived' Sigrid; but by disappearing in this way, Valentine enacts the fate of Helena in the play, and perhaps it's her way of proving to Maria that she understands this character's fate better than she (Maria) does. We and Maria are left not knowing what has happened to this person, and are therefore forced to accept that people can be elusive and endings ambiguous.

[Lars Von Truffaut]

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I could definitely be wrong about this, but... isn't it both. I only saw this once, but my interpretation was that Kristen Stewart's character never really existed in the first place. It is all Maria's creation. "Valentine" is essentially Binoche's Jiminy Cricket; sounding board, best friend, vanity reality check, etc. I don't remember if anyone ever actually acknowledged Valentine verbally, with the exception of Binoche's character. She was always alone in Sils Maria, but needed to tease out her character of Helena and come to grips with the passing of time (her age/Wilhelm's death). And in having to play opposite Joann, she accepts how things have come full circle.

[Sloper]

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I wondered that too, and there's certainly something here about the disposability of the personal assistant, who is quietly replaced in the epilogue. But I think the film rules that out as a literal explanation, since Valentine definitely talks to several people on her own, and is acknowledged by them in return, even if only in the most minimal ways.

[zedz]

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Here's my take on it. They'd just been discussing the fate of Helena in the play: I don't remember the details, but it's something like she wandered off in some remote place and wasn't heard from again. Maria insists this is a clear-cut indication of suicide; Valentine says it's more open-ended, and that Helena might just have gone off to re-invent herself. When Valentine disappears, it's at a moment, and in a part of the hills - just in the dip between two slopes - when it seems like it would be hard for her to run off without Maria noticing, but it's also not obviously treacherous terrain where she would be likely to fall to her death. There is no plausible, realistic way to account for her disappearance. Earlier, Maria offended Valentine by saying that she couldn't really understand the play's characters, since she hadn't 'lived' them as a real actor would, and as Maria has 'lived' Sigrid; but by disappearing in this way, Valentine enacts the fate of Helena in the play, and perhaps it's her way of proving to Maria that she understands this character's fate better than she (Maria) does. We and Maria are left not knowing what has happened to this person, and are therefore forced to accept that people can be elusive and endings ambiguous.

I think this is essentially it: Valentine is making a point that her reading of the play is equally valid (plus, she really is fed up with the Maria dynamic). And at the end of the film

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When Maria is, professionally, in precisely the position of both Helena in the play and the original actress (whose death she uses a 'evidence' for her interpretation of the play), she doesn't crumple into suicide, she just philosophically, professionally moves on, thus tacitly conceding Valentine's point - though there's no evidence that she at that moment understands that her decisions are at all related to what she and Valentine were arguing about.

And I don't see why it's unrealistic to assume that Valentine simply walked to the nearest village and then went home. They did it before. And it was established earlier in the film that she actually has a better sense of the local geography than Maria.

[zedz]

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I wondered that too, and there's certainly something here about the disposability of the personal assistant, who is quietly replaced in the epilogue. But I think the film rules that out as a literal explanation, since Valentine definitely talks to several people on her own, and is acknowledged by them in return, even if only in the most minimal ways.

I agree with this too. I think anything like that is more

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a function of the ideal 'invisibilty' of the personal assistant.

Valentine takes calls for Maria, flirts with the photographer, borrows the car - lots of 'real world' actions that have nothing to do with preparation for the role - which Maria isn't even preparing for at the beginning of the film, when Valentine is already there.

And if Personal Assistant No. 1 is imaginary, then presumably Personal Assistant No. 2 is as well, for no discernable reason if it's all about the role.

[ianthemovie]

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On an even more basic level, Val's abandonment of Maria seems to parallel Sigrid's betrayal of Helena in the play. While Maria isn't sexually infatuated with Val the way that Helena is with Sigrid, she is emotionally dependent on her, as Val herself notes, saying "it's unhealthy" (if I recall correctly). And, of course, Val has been reading the part of Sigrid while running lines with Maria.

[Mr Sausage]

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On an even more basic level, Val's abandonment of Maria seems to parallel Sigrid's betrayal of Helena in the play. While Maria isn't sexually infatuated with Val the way that Helena is with Sigrid, she is emotionally dependent on her, as Val herself notes, saying "it's unhealthy" (if I recall correctly). And, of course, Val has been reading the part of Sigrid while running lines with Maria.

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The "it's unhealthy" bit was actually a scene from the play, though it's supposed to resonate even if it isn't Val's actual opinion at that moment.

.

[ianthemovie]

That's right--thank you for the correction.

The slippage between the dialogue from the play and the characters' own is made even more confusing by the trailer, which is edited in such a way that it makes Helena and Sigrid's lines look like Maria and Val's.

[djproject]

Cover art is now revealed and boy it is just as divisive as the film itself.

[Trees]

Maybe CC can provide an alternative ending... that is actually good.

[Mr Sausage]

Maybe CC can provide an alternative ending... that is actually good.

Don't do this kind of stuff here, please. It's considered trolling on this forum. See: here.

[bakofalltrades]

I think the cover art is rather beautiful. I perceive meaning in the increasing levels of fading/transparency from Binoche to Stewart to Moretz, and in the placement of Stewart between Binoche and Moretz. If they were, in fact, contractually obligated to use the actors' images, I'm pleased with how they've incorporated them.

As for the ending...

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I'm not sure I really care one way or the other what *actually happens* to Val in that moment. (I really quite love the film, so I'm not imparting any negativity into that statement.) There's something so fleet about the way the film moves from scene to scene, often skipping the "heavier," expected moments of drama. (The film doesn't dwell on Wilhelm's actual death or Rosa's grieving process; we don't hear the speech Maria prepared, or her conversations with her ex-husband. We never even see the actual production of the play itself—just the readings and a moment of the rehearsals—nor do know anything about its success or reception.) Because of that, I find it quite fitting that Valentine more or less vanishes. No confrontation, no tears: she's just simply not there anymore.

I *do* think she exists throughout the film, and I think Val's absence is the most striking thing about the scene where Maria interacts with her new assistant—I *feel* Val's absence, and I think Maria does as well. It doesn't strike me as far-fetched that Maria's personal arc throughout the film, in addition to seemingly very few, if any, close companions (at least as far as what the film shows us), might lead her to a place where she'd regret taking for granted an assistant like Val—or at least regret how transitory the relationship between her and her personal assistant might actually be, despite how close they had become. I feel the film invites us to consider the blurry line between the professional capacities of a personal assistant and the more emotional connection of a confidante. I think the film suggests that there's always someone available to fill the role, but that, perhaps owing to where Maria is in her career, that doesn't preclude a sense of loss.