Courtesy of Mongrel MediaPersonal Shopper
Directed by Olivier Assayas
Starring Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, and Sigrid Bouaziz
Princess Theatre (April 10-13, @ 7pm & 9:15pm)
* The film is in mostly English with some French and Swedish with English subtitles
Startlingly enthralling, densely intimate, and, often, perversely frightening, Personal Shopper isn’t what one would expect from this Kristen Stewart starring film. Nor should it be, as Personal Shopper is a completely redefined and beautifully artful story that begs you to clench your nails into your palms while pulling you closer towards the screen.
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria), Personal Shopper follows Maureen Cartwright (Kristen Stewart), a personal shopper for a high profile celebrity who is trying to make contact with her recently deceased brother. That’s about the best explanation possible without revealing too much or its true beauty. Personal Shopper is at once such a simple film but entirely and expertly more intricate; offering mystery throughout but with a pulsating intimacy not only in its characters and dialogue, but in the silent spaces where no words exists.
Unconventionality may be Personal Shopper’s greatest strength. It flips the iconic beats of horror and thriller films in a completely well-balanced, harmonized, and authentic fashion. But suspenseful as the movie gets, and it often does, it never loses its nuance. From the directing to the acting to the music, every scene has a delicacy to it. The movie then, as a whole, is crafted to damn near perfection.
To the dismay of most likely everyone, Kristen Stewart’s performance in the film is unbelievable. She has some serious chops and has come a long damn way from her Twilight days. Perhaps some of the success is owed to Assayas’ seriously stellar directing, whose work in this film is the stuff of a cinephiles wet dream. His fusion of a completely uncanny tonal pairing is remarkable — one of compassionate terror. Its not often a film can be recognizably a drama, mystery, horror, or thriller but still can’t be neatly categorized into a particular genre convention — I wish Netflix luck figuring out where to sort this one.
Personal Shopper doesn’t deserve to be slapped in the face with conventional standards. It’s a film so smart and enthralling that it deserves no synopsis and nothing fancy. It deserves to be walked into with a blank slate, a mind ready to be scared, coaxed, saddened, and dismayed. Like a steak drizzled with chocolate, it doesn’t want to be eaten and shouldn’t taste good, but the last bite leaves your mouth begging for more and eyes glossed over in beautiful perplexity. Personal Shopper is everything and nothing one’s ever seen before.
