Olivier Assayas
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Persona (1966)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
influenced Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Visuals Themes Characters Plot
The star effortlessly keeps pace with the filmmaker’s empathetic tricks and his nods to such foreign-language classics as Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura.”
There are certainly purposeful echoes here of hothouse, inside-out, binary inter-female theatrical dramas like Persona and All About Eve.
Here, the closest comparison might be Bergman’s Persona, as Maria, played by Juliette Binoche — the goddess of European cinema, and no stranger to meta-movies (Certified Copy, Mauvais Sang) — has not one, but two doppelgängers: Chloë Grace Moretz as the young, TMZ-attentive star Jo-Ann Ellis, who will play the role Maria made famous at her age.
The women’s personas (why, yes, I am deliberately hinting at Ingmar Bergman’s shape-shifting “Persona”) blur and overlap.
A more apt comparison, confirmed by a second screening, would be Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, a psychodrama of identity by a director whom Assayas, an astute student of human behaviour, has acknowledged as an influence.
Another of the festival’s best selections—and the last screened for the press—was Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria, a playful and captivating hybrid of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, and quintessentially Assayas-esque meta-mischief.
All About Eve (1950)
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
influenced Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Themes Plot
There are certainly purposeful echoes here of hothouse, inside-out, binary inter-female theatrical dramas like Persona and All About Eve.
For those who like their references more domestic, we get a touch of All About Eve from the impending collaboration between Maria and a hot mess of an actress played by Chloë Grace Moretz.
A variation on the All About Eve theme that hinges primarily on the emotional and psychological effect aging has on a vital, successful actress, Clouds of Sils Maria is an engaging, if rarefied, inside look at the private world of a star.
Updating the 1950 classic "All About Eve," Assayas makes a lot of the movie feel on-message.
The aging actress has always been a deliciously potent subject for movies, from Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" to Margo Channing in "All About Eve" and way beyond.
Another of the festival’s best selections—and the last screened for the press—was Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria, a playful and captivating hybrid of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, and quintessentially Assayas-esque meta-mischief.
L'Avventura (1960)
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
influenced Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Visuals Themes
Assayas is fully in touch with the open spaces and spiritual ennui of Michelangelo Antonioni; parts of Sils Maria carry echoes of both L’Avventura and Eclipse.
The star effortlessly keeps pace with the filmmaker’s empathetic tricks and his nods to such foreign-language classics as Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura.”
There’s touches of “Persona” and “L’Avventura” here, but they’re there almost as meta-movie jokes, not intended to be solved.
What "Something in the Air" has that "No" doesn't, however, are beautiful young people (hello, Carole Combes and Lola Créton), sometimes in states of undress, although the nudity never becomes the movie's raison d'être, as it sometimes seemed to in Bernardo Bertolucci's 2003 film inspired by the 1968 Paris student riots, "The Dreamers."
Not having seen the first movie, I can't offer a comparison of the two, though the pretty actors and counterculture nostalgia kept reminding me of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers.
But — like the similar, stronger "The Dreamers" — it does capture the high emotionalism of a very specific point in a person's life, where the magnitude of the injustices around you is surpassed only by the firm belief that you and your friends alone know an easy way to end them.
Of course, Gilles is a stand-in for Assayas, who is a former film critic, so there's a wholeness to the movie's conception, a sense that his sensibility is shining through in every frame — though compared to the operatic fever-dream of Bernardo Bertolucci's daring, transgressive, NC-17-rated " The Dreamers " (2003), it's pretty tepid stuff.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film “The Dreamers,” set three years earlier, covered much the same ground — love, cinema, revolution — with about 50 times as much color and passion.
Assayas echoes Stanley Kubrick (those hotels) and Michael Haneke (death’s mesmeric pull) but the film-makers whose ghosts most haunt this film are Hitchcock, always a dab hand at torturing his heroines, and Nicholas Roeg at his finest – particularly Bad Timing and Don’t Look Now .
Following her 2015 Cesar win for her performance in his “Clouds of Sils Maria,” Kristen Stewart reunites with French auteur Olivier Assayas for “Personal Shopper,” a modern-day ghost story recalling such classy and often deliberately ambiguous examples of the genre as “Don’t Look Now” (1973) and “The Haunting” (1963).
Following her 2015 Cesar win for her performance in his “Clouds of Sils Maria,” Kristen Stewart reunites with French auteur Olivier Assayas for “Personal Shopper,” a modern-day ghost story recalling such classy and often deliberately ambiguous examples of the genre as “Don’t Look Now” (1973) and “The Haunting” (1963).
(To describe the special effects further would be a betrayal of the film, but I’m not sure I’ve seen anything so unnerving since Robert Wise’s The Haunting .)
This odd little film reminded me of Val Lewton’s 1943 ghost tale “The Seventh Victim,” which is also about a young woman searching for a lost sibling.
In some ways, Personal Shopper feels like a Gallic cineaste’s attempt to recapture some of the freewheeling, kooky genre-drama of a 1980s Brian De Palma movie – and there’s more than an echo of Body Double here – but what’s missing is the latter’s style and verve.
Eighth Grade (2018)
Directed by Bo Burnham
influenced by Demonlover (2002), Personal Shopper (2016)
Themes
It also reminded me of something Olivier Assayas talked about on Sunday , regarding his films Demonlover and Personal Shopper, which both have a significant relationship to technology.
It also reminded me of something Olivier Assayas talked about on Sunday , regarding his films Demonlover and Personal Shopper, which both have a significant relationship to technology.
The mirrored sequins on a Chanel dress cast reflections that flit across the walls like mischievous wraiths, and you may even detect a hint of “Harvey” (1950)—in which Jimmy Stewart was best friends with an invisible rabbit—as the doors of a hotel elevator open and close to let through a nonexistent guest.
Rather than Hollywood, the inspiration here comes from Europe – Lowery cites Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by Chantal Akerman as a reference point; I sensed a kinship with the matter-of-fact metaphysics of Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper – and Asia.
This makes for a great comparison with Olivier Assayas’ similarly themed Personal Shopper from earlier this year – the theme of “waiting” to hear from a loved one who can never physically be with you again, this time told from the other side of mortality.
Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper made more effective dramatic use of a ghost this past spring.
Suddenly she has an “unknown caller,” contacting her via texts on her smartphone, an aggressive and vexing presence not unlike the mocking telephone psycho from Scream .
Perhaps part of Maureen even wishes she was Kyra and that is what leads to the De Palma-inspired secret stalker, who acts like a refugee from Scream and urges Maureen to give in to her secret desires.
Soon, Maureen is taking orders from the mysterious presence on the other end of her cell phone, who starts to feed her lines not that far from those of the postmodern serial killer in “Scream.”
One subplot, involving a series of increasingly threatening text messages from an unknown figure who seems to know everything about Maureen, even updates the slasher genre, modernizing the wry but sinister phone calls from Scream for the smartphone era.
Assayas echoes Stanley Kubrick (those hotels) and Michael Haneke (death’s mesmeric pull) but the film-makers whose ghosts most haunt this film are Hitchcock, always a dab hand at torturing his heroines, and Nicholas Roeg at his finest – particularly Bad Timing and Don’t Look Now .
Maybe it’s that his love for that certain period of skate film informs the movie’s structure with blissful results at the end, that has shades of Assayas’ Irma Vep or, perhaps, had it been done poorly, JJ Abrams’ Super 8 , in its magical depiction of the fruits of creation.
In this respect, Bruckner’s film evokes Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper (2016) and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017), while Hall’s riveting, tortured performance both anchors and unhinges everything.
But that author’s dystopian premonitions are just one aspect of its genre alchemy, a stylish mash-up of Ghost In The Shell , Inception , Under The Skin , and Olivier Assayas’ corporate-espionage thriller demonlover .
You have to reach back to “Poltergeist” (1982), to the image of a little girl sitting in front of a fuzzy TV and staring at the flashes of spectral visitation, to find something as provoking, and as creepily close to home, as the phone sequences in “Personal Shopper.”
Reminiscent of Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours , Call Me by Your Name fills in its details with lush photography of the beautiful environs in which our protagonists struggle with societal influences, sexual urges, and the challenging task of growing up in a world of foreign beauty and differing social mores.
Alternately, a film like Olivier Assayas' demonlover opts away from an emphasis on psychology and even torques its own narrative, much like Miami Vice does, but it braces together strong, succinct impressions of its characters as they discover how vast, debased, and media-saturated the world has become.
So, the filmmaker Olivier Assayas makes a beautiful, poetic film called Summer Hours, which ends up among the handful of movies most celebrated by critics in 2009.