Clouds of Sils Maria

Writer/director Olivier Assayas's "Clouds of Sils Maria" is a meta play-based-on-a-movie-within-a-movie where three women experience the same unfulfilled love and churning angst as their characters.

Juliette Binoche (sporting a super butch haircut for the second half of the movie) is an aging but surprisingly still relevant international film and stage star Maria, who is "sick of acting on wires hanging in front of a green screen."

She made her name at age 20 in the play and film versions of "Maloja Snake," a melodramatic lesbian love story with a name inspired by the meteorological phenomenon where misty clouds crawl through a particular Alpine pass.

Maria originally played the young go-getter Sigrid -- in this remake now assigned to nubile American starlet and tabloid staple Jo-Ann (Chlo� Grace Moretz) -- but has been convinced to play the desperate older executive Helena.

Maria retreats to the playwrights' house in the gorgeous Swiss mountains, where she rehearses with her assistant, Valentine (annoying, bespectacled Kristen Stewart, who, as you might imagine, she wants to be her valentine).

As the chain-smoking pair climbs every mountain, fords every stream, they bicker about their interpretations of the play (which Maria wants to quit but is contractually obligated). Val notes that "the text is like an object -- it'll change perspective based on where you're standing."

Duh. But this premise drives most of the middle of the two-hour film, filled with corny lines like "theater is an interpretation of life truer than life itself," "you can't get innocent twice," and "tastes can get worn out, like desire."

Before Val (consistently and unnecessarily reading every stage direction from the script) does her own imitation of Helena, she admonishes Maria, saying, "You hate her, you hate the play, you don't have to take it out on me. I'm just doing my job."

It's shared that Maria's first Hollywood outing was Sydney Pollack's "A Beetle on Its Back," where Harrison Ford showed her the ropes. Unfortunately, the glorious scenery doesn't provide enough oxygen deprivation to forget about such silliness.

"Clouds of Sils Maria"
DVD
$22.90
http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/clouds-of-sils-maria