Clouds of Sils Maria

Oliver Assayas directs Juliette Binoche as an insecure actress who agrees to appear in a new production of the play that made her famous, only this time in the older woman role instead of the ingénue part. Although Clouds of Sils Maria is essentially a three-woman picture, with Kristen Stewart as an overworked personal assistant and Chloe Grace Moretz as the TMZ-gen Eve to Binoche's Margo Channing, the narrative is incredibly dense, and it takes Assayas the entire first act just to unpack it all. As Binoche and Stewart retreat to a mountain villa, the separation between performance and reality grows blurry—are they running through lines, or picking at the scab of their own older woman/ingénue dynamic? The film explores the psychology of female role-play with depth and intelligence, and the performances are outstanding—Binoche brings her expected ethereal complexity, and Stewart cuts through her aura like vinegar through grease. D.B.