Very Cool!!!

Really Surprised!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Blistering performances.

In a truly outstanding film work, both the director's design and the actor's performance should be part of the film, rather than excessively showing off the individual. The film succeeded in doing this. Enclosure and communication constitute the main contradiction and conflict of the movie plot. Every loss of the protagonist occurs in a sudden, forcing her to slowly begin to try to understand the world that was once too simplistic, and at this level, the theme of the movie it is quite traditional. The boundaries between nature and drama are gradually blurred as the characters change, and this low-key design ultimately achieves the perfect blend of emotions and themes.

It has become a hallmark of so-called "avant-garde filmmaking" to feature ambiguity and vague or incomplete story arcs. This is not art; it is lazy writing. Though the various synopses for this film concentrate on the Maria Enders character, played by Juliette Binoche, returning to the play which began her career after 20 years, but in the role of the older woman who is driven to kill herself (but maybe not?) by the predatory younger woman who became her lover (the role Enders originally played), the film is more about the relationship between Enders and her assistant, Val, played by Kristen Stewart. And then, all of a sudden, it's not. I cannot say more without spoilers, but there are more than one unresolved situations in the film, which felt to me like the screenwriter couldn't figure out how to resolve things, so they just ended it.Not clever, not art - just lazy.

I ask relatively little of movies, but do expect to be entertained, informed or stimulated intellectually in a meaningful way.That said, I agree with other reviewers who consider this to be a self-indulgent film, apparently only about acting, by and for actors. Neither the plot nor the characters are compelling or even interesting. Therefore, the claimed subtlety, sophistication and excellence of the screenplay and acting are not apparent since I'm not engaged enough to care. In short, it is uninteresting, unimportant and unmemorable (Bo-ring).A movie is like a song. The music draws me in, and only then the words or message become of interest. Without appealing sound I could usually care less about possibly interesting content. Clouds of Sils Maria lacks the music.

Clouds of Sils Maria is about a renowned actress, Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche), who must confront her past demons as she reluctantly prepares for the part of an older woman in the same play where she once had the young starlet's role.The problems with Clouds of Sils Maria are many. Here are just a few:1. The writer / director is male. Men should not write female dialogue because they cannot get inside our heads. All three actresses come off highly masculine-sounding. The result? They show no vulnerability and give us nothing female movie-goers can relate to.2. The direction. Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche showed no range or femininity. Especially, Ms. Stewart. This is the director's fault. 3. Editing. Scenes abruptly stop. Scenes go nowhere. Example: Are we to guess that because Stewart's character is vomiting on the side of the road, she is pregnant? And why does Stewart's character just abruptly disappear from Maria's employ? Why does Maria's hair go from shoulder-length to butch? For her part in the play? Of course that is the reason. But we shouldn't see her head of hair just go from point A to point B with no explanation. It's little things like that...Clouds of Sils Maria would have been much better if told without a lot of the unnecessary extraneous nuggets the writer included like the boyfriend and his wife's attempted suicide. Both unnecessary characters.Clouds of Sils Maria would have rolled in like the real Clouds of Sils Maria had a female directed. A female director would have been able to help find the actresses' unique voices in their characters' flaws, and strengths, as women.In addition, the story would have been richer if Chloe Grace Moretz's character had physically come into the story much sooner, and the writer had nixed the storyline about the boyfriend and his wife's suicide attempt, focusing more on- and building up to- Binoche and Moretz's confrontation and collaboration. Lastly, if the director was trying to show us at the end of the movie that Maria DID have an epiphany, he definitely didn't allow Ms. Binoche proper time and acting to transform herself to show she had that epiphany. The movie just abruptly ends. Don't waste your time with Clouds of Sils Maria. Just because it was officially selected in three film festivals doesn't mean it is a well-written or a well-directed movie. In this case, it probably means the film festival directors selected the film to draw in audiences using the stars' names and popularity.If this were a perfect world, and people gave a crap, they would insist more female writers/script doctors and more female directors are at the helm of every movie where the subject involves more than one female.