CINEMA can often enthral you, provoke you, move you, unnerve you and draw you in with an alluring look while it slyly puts an icy hand on your shoulder. Personal Shopper distils those feelings into one artful, terrifically performed experience that haunts long after it ends.
Maureen (Kristen Stewart) works in Paris as a personal shopper, spending her time buying ridiculously expensive outfits for her glamorous celeb boss Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten). She’s unhappy in a job that she admits is “bullshit”, her boyfriend is off working countries away and, worst of all, she’s having to cope with the recent death of her twin brother from a disease she also has.
Maureen has the ability to see ghosts and has been waiting for a sign from her brother since he died. They struck a deal that whoever went first would let the other one know they were alright. Meanwhile, she starts to receive increasingly sinister text messages from an unknown number and feels as drawn to the sender as she does cautious about the danger to which it may lead.
This is the second collaboration between Stewart and director Olivier Assayas – following her attention-grabbing and award-winning supporting turn in his enigmatic drama Clouds Of Sils Maria – and it’s a partnership that’s clearly hitting on something special. Together they’ve made another fascinatingly layered film that really gives her the chance to shine.
Stewart is brought to the forefront this time around and gives the performance of her career, perfectly nuanced as she remains perceivably blank, putting on a brave face of someone self-assured on the outside but conveying internal anguish and uncertainty beneath the surface.
She gives great depth and subtlety that really helps sell the character as a believable human being among a heightened, shallow world of privilege tinged with an otherworldly, supernatural atmosphere. You really can’t take your eyes off her throughout.
Assayas keeps the viewer on edge and takes us to some very unexpected places, dipping his toes to waters of outright spooky horror one minute before flipping things around to an atmospheric, Hitchcockian tale of obsession, peeling back the layers of a mystery that seemed oh so innocent to begin with. All of this while taking a hard look at the nature of loneliness, personal identity, bottling up grief and looking for answers beyond the death of someone close.
In lesser hands this tale might have come across as crass, clunky or all too tied up in its own sense of what makes for complexity. But Assayas is a skilful filmmaker who knows how to tantalise, engross and provoke in all the right ways, while Stewart gets to the heart of a woman desperately hunting and delicately hurting.
FIVE STARS
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here