Olivier Assayas' latest film is a story of a middle-aged actress (Juliette Binoche) who established her long career early on in a play in the part of a tragic teen who has an affair with a older, bourgeois woman. The death of the playwright and an offer from a young director to remount the play (this time as the older woman, with a Lindsay Lohan surrogate as the teen) force her to confront her own mortality and the effects of time.
Mostly set in the mountains of Switzerland (a character in its own right), it's mostly a two-handler between Binoche's character and her personal assistant, played by Kristine Stewart. Assayas does a good job of handling a number of narrative and thematic resonances that occur in the film and Stewart and Binoche have very good chemistry together. The "Lohan" character (played by Chloe Moretz) unfortunately comes across as a bit weak, when she needs to be more of a force of nature.
Assayas has done better work in the past, but "Clouds" has much to recommend.
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