Late August, Early September – 1998

I'm always complaining that few men authors or writer/directors seem capable of writing full, multi-layered women. Olivier Assayas proves the exception and, if you haven't seen it,  CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA proves the apotheosis of his insight into women characters and his skill at evoking them through conversation and through silences. In this multi-character, swirling, intimate, almost wholly conversational picture, every woman, save one, is as real and rich as the men. And when the film ends, it's the women you remember.

The exception, weirdly, is Virginie Ledoyen. She's more a collection of tropes, a directorial fantasy who never seems quite real. Is that because she's biggest star among the actresses? Did Assayas not know how to treat her as a complex human, as he does every other character? Ledoyen never evolves past a an object of desire with a flashpoint temper and little depth.

Despite this one shortfall, the picture grew and grew on me as the story progressed. At first it seemed only a roundelay of shifting lovers among a coterie of friends who just happen to be the best looking, most charismatic and self-contained people in Paris.

But their conversations proved natural and credible in pacing and in ever-present mutual misunderstanding. This is literary, not in a Eric Rohmer arch way, but in a Sally Rooney compassionate way: every character has such profound needs and none will admit to them, no matter how dire their emergencies. It hit me after about an hour - out of two - what extraordinary portraits Assayas was painting. The film is heartfelt and true and immersive.

The visuals have an off-hand, naturalist beauty featuring Assayas' constantly moving camera and his cutting off motion and emotion, which no one can equal. 

Mia Hansen-Løve - director of the hilarious, bittersweet BERGMAN ISLAND, among others - makes her acting debut at 17. She plays the way too young almost-lover of the character around whom all the others revolve. She's a charismatic, magical presence.