Dream Girls

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (C) - I'm being generous with the grade here because I feel guilty about sleeping through portions of this movie, yet another inside-baseball drama about a middle-age actor at a crossroads.

The wonderful Juliette Binoche struggles here as Maria Enders, who is asked to return to the stage in a play that made her famous -- but this time in the role of victim, the boss of an aggressive younger
employee. To prepare for the role, Maria hides out in the Alps and runs through endless line-readings with her young assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), and we're supposed to be fascinated by the blurring between their real banter and the scripted exchanges. Late in the film, a bratty young actress in the mold of Lindsay Lohan or Amanda Bynes (Chloe Grace Moretz) shows up as Maria's co-star.

Olivier Assayas ("Carlos," "Irma Vep") dotes on the trappings of wealth and privilege, to the point of fetishizing Maria's lifestyle. The director lavishes so much attention on the scenery that he doesn't notice his cast flailing. Binoche delivers embarrassing fake laughs; Stewart (good in indies like "Adventureland") adjusts her eyeglass frames, runs a hand through her mane, and pouts a lot; Moretz (fine in "Laggies") cycles through several octaves of shrill, unconvincingly.

The lines from the play are alternatively dull and laughable. It's a tale of lesbian intrigue, and we're meant to find all kinds of overtones in the pas-de-deux between Maria and Valentine. But it's all glazed with a Zalman King cable-TV sheen -- casual touches, or a glimpse of Valentine sleeping in a thong, from Maria's point of view. A serious misstep by a talented director.

And I know we're in a new era where real-life folks check their phones a lot, but I'm not eager to watch characters do it constantly throughout a film. Skyping too. Yawn. Literally.

I struggled to find a good opening here. But I could not find anything worth staying awake for.