The domestic trailer for Clouds of Sils Maria has surfaced. The film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, stars Juliette Binoche (Godzilla), Kristen Stewart (Still Alice), and Chloe Grace Moretz (The Equalizer), and was directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas (Carlos). Clouds of Sils Maria tells the story of middle-aged actress Maria (Binoche), who is asked to star in the revival of a play that made her famous decades prior, except this time she’s being cast as the older lead while a younger, troubled starlet (Moretz) is given the role that made Maria a star years ago. Stewart plays Maria’s assistant, whom Maria may have deeper feelings toward. All of this culminates in an interesting look at youth, fading beauty, and muliebrity for Maria as she deals with her age in an industry that’s unforgiving to older women.
Assayas and Binoche previously collaborated on 2008’s Summer Hours, and the director has a penchant for making female-driven stories (Clean, Les Destinees, Irma Vep), with 1996’s Irma Vep also dealing with an actress as the focal point of the story. For Stewart, who saw big budget success with the Twilight saga and Snow White and The Huntsman, Clouds of Sils Maria is the continuation of a string of smaller, indie roles as of late. Her previous turns in last year’s Camp X-Ray and Still Alice also made the rounds in the festival circuit. Grace Moretz has also balanced her career between smaller art-house films and bigger studio projects, appearing in Laggies, Muppets Most Wanted, If I Stay, and the aforementioned Equalizer just in the last year alone.
Clouds of Sils Maria received a positive response when it premiered in Cannes last year, despite not having the staying power and impact of some of the other foreign releases during the festival season. IFC Films will release Clouds in limited fashion on April 10th.
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