“Clouds Of Sils Maria” (2014)
You don’t have to be a fan of Olivier Assayas’ arch drama (and for the record, we’re among the few naysayers) to appreciate Stewart’s turn in it — indeed, it’s possible that not liking the film’s unconvincing and thin theatricality may inspire one to even more admiration for Stewart’s naturalism. Possibly the most relaxed and unguarded we’ve ever seen her onscreen, Stewart plays Valentine, the PA to Juliette Binoche‘s aging theater star Maria Enders. Valentine is just one of two younger foils for Maria — the film also directly observes Maria’s tacit rivalry with the young starlet Jo-Ann, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, who is about to take the role Maria made famous many years ago, in the irksomely title play-within-the-film “Maloja Snake.” But more interesting than the obvious opposition/doubling/reflection dynamic there is the relationship between Maria and Valentine, which also comes to resemble the master/servant, dom/sub duality that “Maloja Snake” apparently deals in. Within this self-reflexive film, Stewart gets to comment slyly on her own stardom when Val talks about Jo-Ann; and in general, the idea of a huge star of a massive young adult franchise playing the deglammed and put-upon assistant, who is proximate to fame but not herself famous, is the one element of ironic in-jokiness in the film that really works. Stewart went on to become the first American actress ever to win a César (French Oscar) for this role.
“Adventureland” (2009)
It’s one of the more understated and low-key of teen movies, especially compared to the sweet but vulgar vibe of director Greg Mottola‘s prior breakout hit, “Superbad.” So it’s appropriate that “Adventureland” cast a pre-“Social Network” Jesse Eisenberg (who was still establishing the earnest nebbish stuttering persona that David Fincher‘s film would subvert so cleverly) and teamed him for the first of three times so far with Kristen Stewart. Stewart, playing Em, the semi-attainable object of affection for both Eisenberg’s and Ryan Reynolds‘ characters, exudes a kind of effortless cool which you can see would be catnip to a socially maladroit young man, while also retaining a freshness that you understand would be alluring to a more worldly, older guy. And so again, while really Em’s function within the film is to be an agent of change in a young man’s life (the film is not really from her perspective at all), Stewart’s performance fills in a lot of the blanks left on the page, and straddles the innocence/experience duality that the character embodies with unforced grace. “Adventureland” came out the year after the first “Twilight” movie, and while hindsight is 20/20 and all that, there is a disingenuousness to her performance here that later films, shot after the fame phenomenon had really taken hold, seem to lack.