Sils Maria, a place of wondrous climate that used to invigorate Nietzsche now provides with inspiration an actress facing one of the most difficult challenges of her professional life.
At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Swiss Alps. A young Hollywood starlet is to take on the role of Sigrid, and Maria finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an unsettling reflection of herself.
»I wanted to do a sort of portrait of an actress in her 40s, and I thought it would be more interesting to set it in the theatre, because it gets rid of the material constraints of cinema. It’s about that very fine line between reality and imagination – actors are always somewhere in between.«
- Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas
Born in 1955 in Paris, son of the famous screenwriter and director Jacques Rémy. After shooting a couple of short films, he worked as a member of the editing board of Cahiers du cinéma in the beginning of the 1980s. In 1986 he filmed his first feature, Disorder. He is also the author of several books about cinema, such as Conversations avec Bergman and Hong Kong Cinéma.