MIFF NOTES: Personal Shopper (2016, Dir. Olivier Assayas)

I’m sold on Kristen Stewart. Through and through. She’s hands down one of the most interesting actresses in America at the moment. I get it. Great.

I’m not sold on Olivier Assayas. I have reservations. I think he has his moments but I also think his moments pass relatively quickly and he hangs on to them long after they have.

I say this off the back of his most recent hits, Après mai and The Clouds of Sils Maria, the latter which also showcased Stewart to brilliant effect. I won’t deny Assayas has something. A fleeting something. A something that he doesn’t yet know what to do with.

If I’m being enigmatic, it is because his latest, Personal Shopper trades so heavily on enigma. Stewart is Maureen, one half of a set of twins, who is attempting to make contact with her recently departed brother’s spirit, in between shopping for a fashion mogul. Assayas serves up a lot of spook and a lot of high-end fashion.

At its most interesting Personal Shopper plays with the concept of disembodiment and identity envy in the once-removed world of electronic communication, how we play different roles when we are no longer in the presence of others and how our other selves interact on that plane. Parallels with the spirit world aren’t undue but Assayas oversteps the mark with how he handles it all, especially when he dives once more into another unnecessary coda.

I dug Stewart. I dug a lot of the mood. But, overall, I just didn’t buy into this one.

★★★

Trailer:

Personal Shopper screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.