The Reel World: Parents' Weekend

I hope, if your parents visited this weekend, that they believed all of the lies you told them. “Yeah, mom, I totally spend so much time studying. I never go out on Wednesday nights. My room is definitely this clean all the time.” If you’ve seen “Anna Karenina” (2012), one of the better Keira Knightley period dramas (yes, that’s a genre), you can relate to this peculiar sort of facade-building. The film is shot entirely on a theater stage, highlighting imperial Russian aristocratic society’s hypocritical artificiality. Knightley’s doomed heroine has been born into a world that only exists in the minds of those fortunate enough to occupy it, so when she is rejected by that world, she has nothing in the real world. It’s kind of like when the mountain of clothes you piled up behind your desk for your parents’ visit comes crashing down.

Considering “Anna Karenina,” I came to the realization that, like the aristocrats of 1870s Russia, I sometimes also live in a completely imaginary, made-up-by-myself world. I seem to enter this world most often in two scenarios: when I have things to do that I most certainly do not want to do and when I want to eat something I most certainly should not eat. “Oh, it’s only a 400-page reading on information vital to the course, I can just skim it.” Or, “Raisinets are a health food! Raisins have antioxidants, right?”

Sometimes I feel like I’m in “The Truman Show” (1998). In that film, Jim Carrey’s Truman Burbank realizes on his 30th birthday that his entire life has actually been a reality television show, broadcast live worldwide since he was born, and that all the people in his life are actors. He then tries to escape. Usually, I feel like one of the actors, knowing that the show isn’t real. But when I start believing that family sized hummus is made for one person and one sitting and that I’ll definitely have time to do all my homework on Sunday night, I start to confuse my role.

This blending of truth and fiction is the central conflict in “Clouds of Sils Maria” (2014). As veteran actress Maria (Juliette Binoche) remakes the production that made her famous, in playing a different role, she comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable picture of her younger self in the actress who takes on her old role (Chloe Grace Moretz). It’s sort of like when I see my Cheeto-dusted reflection in my computer screen between Netflix episodes. “No! I don’t want this! Next episode!”

“Clouds of Sils Maria” is very understated and very French, and that’s part of the reason it’s so effective. As Maria and her assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), grapple with sexual tension, grief and regret, they begin to lose the distinction between their true selves and the characters and archetypes they portrayed. As for me, I like being somewhere in the middle. Hummus tastes better when you don’t share.