In Clouds of Sils Maria, the life of a long-serving actress is a lonely one.

REVIEW: The unlikely pairing of Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart excel in Clouds of Sils Maria, a drama about an actress coming to the end of her prime.

Clouds Of Sils Maria (MA15+)

Director: Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours)

Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lars Eldinger.

Rating: ***1/2

Under the weather from an overcast future

The cruelly short professional life of an actress is no life at all: not so much a race against time, as a long and agonising wait for time to pass you by.

You can carefully nurture your talent and refine your craft for decades. You can blatantly lie about your age. But unless you’re Meryl Streep, that day when the phone stops ringing and the offers disappear is never far away.

In this fascinating, flawlessly performed drama, Juliette Binoche plays Maria, a decorated star of stage and screen staring her own impending demise square in the eye.

While it isn’t over yet for Maria, she guardedly acknowledges that her shining career is losing its lustre.

Though the efforts of her dedicated personal assistant Valentine (Twilight heroine Kristen Stewart, winner of a French Cesar award for a fine display here) form a much-needed buffer from reality, the writing remains on the wall for Maria.

Juggling phones, schedules and coffee cups, Valentine is nothing less than a one-woman force field protecting another woman from losing her identity entirely.

It must be said of Clouds Of Sils Maria that proceedings can stray towards the unnecessarily pretentious at times, largely because of an abundance of preciously overwritten dialogue.

However, the film’s X-ray-like understanding and depiction of its characters always steer it back in the right direction.

Clouds of Sils Maria is now showing at art house cinemas around Australia.

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Originally published as In Clouds of Sils Maria, the life of a long-serving actress is a lonely one.