(Part 1) Translation of Olivier Assays' interview w/ InRockuptibles about Kristen Stewart & Clouds of Sils Maria


In Sils Maria, Olivier Assays organizes a few confrontations between two characters in particular: an internationally renowned actress and her young American assistant, both isolated, in the outback of Tyrol to prepare a play. But it is also a confrontation between two real actresses: Juliette Binoche in a mirror role that she interpreted in her early stages in ‘Rendez-Vous’ (1985), by André Téchiné (Written by Assayas), and Kristen Stewart, the star of Twilight (2008, etc…), reinvented here as an American student a little tomboy-ish with an incredible intellectual subtlety and comical nature. The director explains in detail some facets of this magnificent portrait of actresses, sensual, wily and kaleidoscopic.

DANGER
“I wrote the movie thinking only of Juliette (Binoche). The film is constructed around her. Next to this character of a French actress with an international career, I imagined the character of an assistant and I instantly wanted for the role an Anglo-Saxon actress. The character had to have this pragmatism that Anglo-Saxon people possess, a woman of her time, to the point of having some some sort of toughness. And it was important to me for the dialogue to be in English. Because I wanted to go search into Juliette something different than what she can do in French. I was looking for an actress who could put her in danger and to shake her up.”

IDENTIFICATION
“ I saw the first ‘Twilight’, that I like, but I haven’t seen the next ones. Before that, I had already seen her in Into The Wild (2007) by Sean Penn. Then I saw her in ‘The Runaways’ (2010), which is not a good film, where the reconstitution of rock’n’roll in the 70s is very artificial. But we believe it and we perfectly accept that she is Joan Jett. In “The Runaways” especially, we discover in her something very tough, tense. I was hoping to find behind this wall, some form of humor, something human and something close, which produces identification. I found it and it was way beyond my expectations.”

AFTER
“I met Kristen a few times thanks to my producer Charles Gillibert, who also produced ‘On The Road’ (2012). We spent some informal time together after some premieres, in small groups. We didn’t talk about my work, or hers, but the contact was nice. I felt like she was very interested in working in one of my films.

ON THE SIDE
“She really understood well everything that was playing in the film, the mapping of feelings, including the ambiguous ones.. But she mostly saw, I believe, how much this role, which is not an appearance at the center of the film, was interesting for her. Kristen has a little bit of a lurid image in Hollywood. In the film, there is a character close for this, a teenage star played by Chloé Moretz, and the character of Kristen takes a very critical look at her, never cease to comment about what she represents. This step aside is a little reflective, it’s what attracted her to the project, I think. It allowed her to say: “I have this distance, I can take a step back and you can go fuck yourselves.”

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