MARCH 21, 2017 – 2:16 PM
Personal Shopper, from French writer/director Olivier Assayas and starring Kristen Stewart, is out now in a limited nationwide release, and here are five reasons that you should make a special trip to the arthouse cinema to see it.
1. First of All, the Film Is Quite Entertaining
A highly pleasurable and admirably gonzo blend of restrained, elegant ghost story, scathing and hilarious social satire, introspective character study, atmospheric and leisurely mood piece, nerve-frying Hitchcockian thriller, and pull-out-all-the-stops horror movie, Personal Shopper only stumbles on its own ambitions once or twice, and is never less than compulsively watchable, thoroughly absorbing.
2. It’s a Genuinely Frightening Ghost Story
Stewart plays Maureen, a medium who is grieving the loss of her twin brother, Lewis. Throughout the film, Maureen receives mysterious, sometimes downright menacing messages that appear to be from beyond. Are these disturbances really coming from Lewis? Is a real-life predator just setting her up? Is it all in her head? Could all of these be true? Again, the movie is a head trip, and it retains a dreamy ambiguity up until the very end—it is frightening, too. Very much so. Assayas relies heavily on horror genre tropes (Maureen walking around dark hallways calling out to ghosts and hearing loud noises makes up a great portion of the film’s runtime), yet the direction and pacing of the film are expertly unusual, frequently surprising and always unnerving. And there is one scare near the end that is so perfectly timed, staged and framed, that it made me leap out of my seat and sent a cold shiver down my spine. I am a horror movie buff, a very tough nut to crack. This got me.
3. It’s Actually Quite Funny, Too
Maureen is also a personal shopper, which is exactly what it sounds like. She’s an assistant who buys expensive clothing for a hotshot celebrity. Come on, is there any job more frivolous, downright goofy, than buying clothes for someone else who can’t be bothered to go to the store (this is a real occupation, by the way)? And that’s where the film’s biting satire comes in. Personal Shopper, as I’ve said, is truly terrifying, and it also made me laugh throughout. Maureen works for a self-absorbed, morally bankrupt socialite monster named Kyra, and it’s particularly provocative to see Stewart, a truly talented actor and reluctant, spotlight-shy movie star, in this role. Between her bone-dry, deadpan work here, and her howlingly funny recent stint on Saturday Night Live (I’m sure I’m not the only one who has watched that Totino’s sketch a million and a half times), one is left with a burning desire for Stewart to pursue more comedic roles. I was fortunate enough to see a screening of Personal Shopper with Kristen Stewart in attendance, and when interviewed after the film (soft-spoken, no-nonsense, modest as ever), she confirmed that this is a direction in which she would like to take her career. I can’t wait.
4. The Film Is Surprisingly Touching and Insightful
At its heart, and it does have a heart, Personal Shopper is a sad and truthful story about grieving for a loved one. Maureen’s journey is uniquely painful—she has recently experienced a tragic, heart-shattering loss, and her unfulfilling day job is one of extreme phoniness, devoid of humanity. She is heartbroken, isolated. She longs to make peace with the loss of Lewis, and also, maybe, to come back to the world of the living herself. I felt a sting of irony as I listened to Stewart talk about the film before a huge Los Angeles audience. As she was speaking about the film’s messages and themes about human connectivity in contemporary society, most people in the audience were recording her on their phones or cameras, lost in the aura of Kristen Stewart the movie star, not appearing to really be listening to what Kristen Stewart the actor had to say about her art.
5. Kristen Stewart’s Performance Is Riveting
HUSHTRUTH....... 