I think this is the most interested I’ve ever been in a director. We watch Maria circle this role, catching up to a version of herself she’s been avoiding. The shift from sigrid to Helena looms over everything, not as a promotion or a reinvention but a silent realisation that the centre has moved and she’s no longer standing in it. It would be pretty easy to push that into melodrama and make this an easy yet interesting watch, but Assayas has no interest in that. He lets it breathe, which is why it stings. Every conversation drifts and stalls and doubles back on itself, like she’s trying to talk her way out of something that’s already decided. It lands in a much colder space than just fear, its recognition. That uneasy moment you realise the world has adjusted to a version of you haven’t fully accepted yet. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but 3 films in I’ve come to realise he never stops there. Shit gets properly fucking slippery once the play seeps into the rest of it. Rehearsals bleed their way into casual conversations. Lines echo back in moments that feel way too specific to be an accident and suddenly none of it feels anchored. You’re constantly recalabrating, tryna work out whether you’re watching performance or honesty, or somewhere in between that. Maria never fully switches off, even when she thinks she has and that tension carries through every interaction. Then you throw Valentines and Jo Ann into the mix and it refuses to flatten into a simple old vs new statement. There’s pushback, there’s disagreement but you just get the feel they’re all different expressions of the same thing. Shaped by whatever time they happen to exist in. Nobody dismissed, nobody wins, it just keeps circling the question. That’s what makes his meta approach so addictive to me, it’s the exact thread that runs straight through irma vep. This guy pulls cinema apart and lets it reassemble in front of you, actors feeding into roles, roles feeding back into the actor, everything overlapping and a clean line can’t be drawn anywhere. Which is the whole idea of the snake, forming, dissolving, reappearing. That instability anchors the while film and Stewart fits into it perfectly, so subtle and unforced she almost fades into the background until it clicks how much weight she’s actually carrying. This guy is so fucking smart man.
I think this is the most interested I’ve ever been in a director. We watch Maria circle this role, catching up to a version of herself she’s been avoiding. The shift from sigrid to Helena looms over everything, not as a promotion or a reinvention but a silent realisation that the centre has moved and she’s no longer standing in it. It would be pretty easy to push that into melodrama and make this an easy yet interesting watch, but Assayas has no interest in that. He lets it breathe, which is why it stings. Every conversation drifts and stalls and doubles back on itself, like she’s trying to talk her way out of something that’s already decided. It lands in a much colder space than just fear, its recognition. That uneasy moment you realise the world has adjusted to a version of you haven’t fully accepted yet. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but 3 films in I’ve come to realise he never stops there. Shit gets properly fucking slippery once the play seeps into the rest of it. Rehearsals bleed their way into casual conversations. Lines echo back in moments that feel way too specific to be an accident and suddenly none of it feels anchored. You’re constantly recalabrating, tryna work out whether you’re watching performance or honesty, or somewhere in between that. Maria never fully switches off, even when she thinks she has and that tension carries through every interaction. Then you throw Valentines and Jo Ann into the mix and it refuses to flatten into a simple old vs new statement. There’s pushback, there’s disagreement but you just get the feel they’re all different expressions of the same thing. Shaped by whatever time they happen to exist in. Nobody dismissed, nobody wins, it just keeps circling the question. That’s what makes his meta approach so addictive to me, it’s the exact thread that runs straight through irma vep. This guy pulls cinema apart and lets it reassemble in front of you, actors feeding into roles, roles feeding back into the actor, everything overlapping and a clean line can’t be drawn anywhere. Which is the whole idea of the snake, forming, dissolving, reappearing. That instability anchors the while film and Stewart fits into it perfectly, so subtle and unforced she almost fades into the background until it clicks how much weight she’s actually carrying. This guy is so fucking smart man.
