Personal Shopper

Year: 2016
Genre: Drama
Directed:  Olivier Assayas
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Nora von Waldstatten, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie, Ty Olwin, Hammou Graia, Benjamin Biolay, Audrey Bonnet, Pascal Rambert, Auriela Petit
Production: CG Cinema

Identity, grief, guilt and vengeful ghosts calling from the living past; there, I just saved you an hour and forty five minutes of Kirsten Stewart fidgeting with her hair and texting like a pubescent Amber Alert in progress. If you really want to get exactly the same experience for a fraction of the cost, bring your best clothes to a laundromat, hit spin and watch YouTube videos about Victor Hugo on your iphone.

Or you can have a good 'ol fashion seance!

Personal Shopper sells itself as a modern ghost story. By day Maureen, (Stewart) our hero, works as a personal shopper, running errands for a famous-because-she's-famous celebrity (von Waldstatten) who simply must have the latest fashion accessories. By night, she's a medium with a talent she continually insists belonged to her belated brother - that talent presumably being, looking like a sleep-walking, emaciated golem. Before her brother died, He promised he would try to make contact with her so she can lay her anxieties about the afterlife to rest. Thus she waits...and waits, and waits some more, slowly absorbing the evening Paris lamplight while riding in her moped.

Now I know that people deal with grief differently, thus I wouldn't expect our demure protagonist to eat an entire container of Chunky Monkey while watching The Aquabats Supershow (2012-Present) (I would). However, I like to think a shared experience of most humans is seeing subtle but ever-present reminders of the deceased everywhere. When I lost a friend years ago, I couldn't glance at a tie-dye shirt without getting the feels.

Did I just witness proof of an afterlife? Naw...

Maureen on the other hand isn't so much finding reminders of her dead brother as she is searching for signs and coming up empty handed. She either finds, or is in the periphery of a satisfactory conclusion to her story arc literally everywhere she goes. But instead of seeing a ghost and having it vomit ectoplasm as a sign that maybe she should move on, she keeps pushing and pushing until every major event in this thing becomes meaningless. It's a frustrating situation - like following phosphenes around your closed eyelids and never seeming to pin them down to get a good look.

I give you movie without point...why? Because I'm French!

The parts that are most viscerally effective are ironically the most mundane: elongated hand-held segments of driving through busy city streets, silent walks through creaky houses, characters holding dogs back from open front yard gates. All moments where we get to see Maureen's real, actual expressions, before the camera obfuscates their meaning like a cat covering up their litter box. Then of course there are the texts. Long, drawn out sections of the film are expounded via cell phone texts. There's even a late addition murder mystery that unfolds just so their can be more f**king texting! Those grasping at straws are liable to see Personal Shopper's preoccupation with screens and conclude it must mean something. I'm more liable to believe if Assayas were alive in the 18th century he'd be doing performance art with semaphore. That's just the kind of pretentious rake he is.

Is she saying S.O.S. or L.O.L.?

If I wanted to watch someone stare blankly at a screen all day I would have sat at a park bench and leered creepily at teenagers. At least then there'd be an element of voyeurism; here there's more an element of who gives a damn.

Final Grade: F