"Palm d’Or" award nomination at Cannes Film Festival.
In the opening scenes, Maria is en route to collect an award on behalf of a good friend, Wilhelm Melchior. Melchior is the writer of a play named Maloja Snake, which was then made into a film starring Maria.
Maria is joined on this journey by her personal assistant and confident Val. The relationship between these two women is the focus throughout, and it’s expertly established for us in these opening sequences.
Dialogue between the pair overlaps, is interrupted by calls and sometime even hangs in the air as the topics up for discussion change and segue. There is an incredibly natural feel to their interchanges that comes from a great script performed by two fine actresses.