FilmSnobReviews

Title: Personal Shopper
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins

What It Is: When a personal shopper to a star Maureen (Stewart) begins to try to connect with her recently deceased twin brother in order to keep her promise to him. When she starts to feel a presence around her in the house he lived and died in other more mysterious begins to happen. Is she a medium? Can she communicate with the dead? These are the questions that have yet to be completely understood. What exactly is going on with Maureen?

What We Think: Assayas seems to get the best out of Stewart as she is once again really good, much like she was in his previous venture Clouds of Sils Maria. Narratively Assayas’ dialogue gets sort of lost in the weirdness and obscurity of it all. There’s this oddly placed supernaturalism to the film that feels displaced. Not that I don’t “get” what Assayas was trying to do I just don’t particularly like it. There’s far too much stuff that’s suppose to be assumed. I love being questions and being asked questions by a directors decisions but here there’s never really an answer and we’re left trying to fill in the holes.

Our Grade: B-, I LOVE the dialogue, and the ideas behind the film but too much of it is placed into the hands of the audience. It is this balance that can be really hard to handle and that foreign directors (predominantly French) to figure out. Often French cinema and their directors tend to lack a care for telling a story straightforwardly which can work sometimes but does not often help the project. Kristen Stewart deserves credit for her post-Twilight career. I loved the aforementioned Assayas film. Adventureland, Still Alice, and Certain Woman are all great films with her being excellent in them. Even an in fair to a midland piece like Welcome to the Rileys she shines. See the film if you’re into Stewart or weird paranormal stuff.