Juliette Binoche pitched idea for film ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’

TORONTO – Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche pulled a role reversal with her new film, “Clouds of Sils Maria.”

Instead of the director approaching her about the project, as is typical, she was the one who pitched the idea for the story.

Binoche says she’s known writer-director Olivier Assayas for many years and worked with him on the 1985 romance “Rendez-vous” and the 2008 family drama “Summer Hours.”

But she wanted to collaborate on a deeper level, and she craved a female-centric project, so she rang him up.

“I felt like coming to him and saying, ‘Hey, I think we can work well together, and don’t be frightened of the feminine,'” the French star said in an interview at September’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“I think it provoked him in the best way, because we’d known each other for a long time. He wrote ‘Rendez-vous’ like 30 years ago, this film that really made me start when I was a young actress.”

“Clouds of Sils Maria” stars Binoche as a famous actress who agrees to star in a revival of the play that made her famous 20 years ago. To her dismay, the director doesn’t want her to take on the younger character that she once played, but an older one. Making matters worse is her impending divorce and her struggles to come to grips with aging in the spotlight.

Kristen Stewart plays the woman’s assistant and Chloe Grace Moretz acts as her co-star in the play.

“For me, what was exciting is that I almost had three parts to play: the star, the falling star in front of the public still believing that she can make it … and the third part where the role takes over, somehow,” said Binoche, who won an Oscar for her supporting role in 1996’s “The English Patient” and was nominated for another for 2001’s “Chocolat.”

Like her character in the film, Binoche said she gives herself up wholly to each role she plays.

“I feel very responsible as an actor, because otherwise if I don’t give myself 100 per cent I feel like this is not fair for people paying their seats, for their time,” she said.

But the 51-year-old Binoche said she doesn’t reflect on the past. Instead, she prefers to transform, and she doesn’t mind letting go of her youth.

“You cannot have the past and the rebirth at the same time. It doesn’t work like that. It’s like a baby: you let go of the womb in order to go to life. You cannot go back. There’s no going back.”

“Clouds of Sils Maria” opened Friday in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.