Greetings again from the darkness. Most of us don't spend much time re-living our past, and we certainly don't go through the emotional turmoil of analyzing our early lives from a different perspective. This story puts actress Maria (Juliette Binoche) in those shoes and then we watch as she fights, claws and battles her way through.

Maria is a well-respected veteran actress who has been offered a role in the revival of the play that made her a star more than 20 years earlier. The play was written by her mentor, who dies suddenly as she is on her way to visit. Hotshot director Klaus (Lars Eidinger) wants Maria for the role of the older woman, and this is difficult for Maria to accept since she played what she considers the far more interesting younger woman in the first version. Internal psychological warfare breaks out.

Maria's personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) struggles to keep Maria informed of today's world – celebrity gossip is especially key in their conversations. They also run lines together, and the parallels between the play and their real lives are so prevalent that the lines are often blurred between written word and spoken word. Things get really dicey when Jo-Ann (Chloe Grace Moretz) enters the picture as the talented, extremely popular, personally out of control actress slated to play opposite Maria in the play.

These three actresses are exceptional … yes, even you Kristen Stewart haters will be impressed. They each bring extraordinary depth to their role, and all are a bit outside of what would be considered their comfort zone. Their exchanges are fun, but what's not said is every bit as exciting and key.

Filmed in the Sils Maria area of the Alps, the landscape is beyond breathtaking. Maloja Snake is the title of the play, and it refers to the fantastic cloud formations that snake through the peaks and valleys of this marvel of nature. The scenery is a nice complement to the emotional rides each of the characters take, and writer/director Olivier Assayas ensures that we have no shortage of talking points after the film.

Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is a veteran actress tired of her big blockbuster role in X-Men. Valentine (Kristen Stewart) is her ever-present assistant. Maria started her career twenty years ago as an ingénue in Maloja Snake written by Wilhelm Melchior. She is traveling on the train to Zurich to receive an award for Wilhelm while she's dealing with a contentious divorce. She receives news that Wilhelm has died. She is talked into doing a new production of Maloja Snake except this time she has to play the older lesbian lover. The scandal-plagued Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz) is playing her old part. Maria struggles to find her way in her new role.

Binoche and Stewart are very capable actresses. There are times when the movie could have pushed their relationship harder. It suggests some things between them but it never elevates the tension to a higher level. It's fascinating to see them going back and forth. The script reading suggests something more both in the story and in the real world. Jo-Ann is obviously closelu connected to the real Stewart. All of that is fascinating but I need the characters to show greater drama.

"Clouds of Sils Maria" was written and directed by Frenchman Olivier Assayas shortly before his 60th birthday. I would say as a whole I slightly preferred his last work "Après mai", but his newest achievement is still pretty good and worth a watch. Juliette Binoche delivers a convincing performance as an aging actress and Kristen Stewart plays her assistant. Stewart was the MVP of the film for me and I clearly felt something was missing the moment she disappeared near the end. So I guess I am not glad she died during a car crash or something earlier in the film.

There is lots of irony in this film. The way Stewart speaks about Moretz' character it seems she is almost talking about herself in real life. There are quite a few parallels. Also the perception of the film Moretz' character plays in is interesting. For some it is trash, for some it is a masterpiece, but it's definitely incredibly successful at the box office, just like the Twilight films. And then there is of course that hilarious werewolf quote. I won't go further into detail. If you know a bit about Stewart's rise (and fall) in the last 5 years, you will see more than a few parallels. Moretz here plays a character who reminded me a bit of the role she played on the TV show "30 Rock", a young girl who seems delightful and gentle, but is actually a manipulative beast.

The film was solid from start to finish, occasionally great and I also enjoyed the ending with the young film-maker who approaches Binoche's character and expresses that he is not interested in a movie industry filled with people like Chloe Moretz in this movie. However, I would not have minded either to see the actual premiere of the play. One thing I did not like that much was how Stewart's character perceived Binoche's character to treat her so bad. In many scenes the two seemed much more like friends to me (maybe even more) than just colleagues. One interesting scene is when one of them goes swimming naked and the other leaves on her underwear. Also the two also were a bit critical of the other, which is usually not the worst either and much better than when they were constantly lying to each other and just say the things the other wants to hear.

This film also has some comedy moments, like when Binoche's character realizes she has a seat next to Zischler's character. That was one interesting couple anyway and the fact that she gives him her number later on makes me think that things probably were not exactly the way Binoche's character tells Stewart's character about her past with Zischler's character. Anyway, it was great to see Kristen Stewart shine in this film and be on par with a truly experienced actress and Academy Award winner like Juliette Binoche. She turned a fairly uninteresting assistant character into the best thing about this movie. So much charisma and expression in her scenes. Moretz's part was kinda showy, but I personally was not too impressed. I usually like her, but I felt her role was much more interesting when we only hear about it from newspaper snippets or online videos than when she actually enters the picture.

Back to Binoche, she plays a character who played a young woman in a play years ago and profited from the lack of talent of her female counterpart. Now she has aged and is instructed to play the older character with a young actress playing the girl again. How can she deal with this responsibility? Will things go again the way that the new starlet shines and the older actress is just means to the younger one's success? Find out yourself and go see this Palme D'Or nominee. You probably won't regret it. It's a decent movie, visually pretty nice as well, even if the actual Maloja Snake near the end did not impress me as much as I hoped it would. If there is anything negative about it, then maybe that almost all the male characters were kinda forgettable, but I guess that's okay as it's a very female centered movie. Certainly worth a watch.