Filmmaker Olivier Assayas (check out his Carlos mega-biopic) reunites with his Clouds of Sils Maria star Kristen Stewart for a slick, mysterious, pseudo-horror film. Stewart stars as Maureen Cartwright, a personal shopper for a Parisian celebutante who also happens to be a medium. Her twin brother, Lewis, recently died from a heart condition she shares. Now Maureen is waiting for a sign from her brother, who also communicated with spirits. You now know more about the movie than I did for the first half hour, at least.
After a mid-film text-fest between Maureen and an unknown caller, the movie gets truly creepy, verging on downright terrifying. And its opacity never quite clears up. Even after several hours of thought, I am still unsure exactly what was going on. However, Stewart gives it her all (and bares a lot of her all, too), though she remains as unrelatable and distant as always.
The movie has all the pieces of a ghost story, but fits them into the puzzle of that is the life of an unfocused twentysomething slacker. The allure K-Stew holds for an individual viewer will probably go a lot further in determining how interesting one will find Personal Shopper than any of Assayas’ sleek visuals or oblique philosophy.
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