Personal Shopper (2016)
Directed by Olivier Assayas

Film Review

There was consternation aplenty when Olivier Assayas took the Best Director award at Cannes in 2016 for his first all-out foray into fantasy, Personal Shopper.  Those who had come to regard Assayas as one of the great auteurs of French cinema had much to moan about with this half-baked diversion into supernatural thriller territory, particularly when they had been so well-served by the director's previous film, The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014).  An objective comparison of the two films is not helped by the fact that both feature the same actress, Kristen Stewart, in a leading role.  Whereas Stewart was nothing less than mesmerising in Assayas's last film, in his flimsy melange of pyschological thriller and paranormal chiller she barely manages to pull through with her reputation intact - and she has Assayas's atrocious script to thank for this.

Personal Shopper fails, as so many potentially excellent auteur films fail, because it has no clear idea what it wants to be.  It somersaults between genres as if it is afraid to commit to any and merely looks like the messy result of a high speed car crash involving a serious auteur meditation on mortality, an excessively arty ghost movie and a devious Clouzot-style thriller.  If Assayas hadn't orchestrated this monstrous collision he might have ended up with at least one, if not three, films that were worth seeing.  Instead, all that he delivers is an unpleasant-looking pot pourri that is really nothing more than a monstrously self-indulgent exercise in style.  Assayas's preoccupation with the increasingly materialistic nature of our lives is evident in many earlier films but here it serves as an all too convenient jumping off point for a virtually contentless story that meanders about all over the place and never really gets anywhere. The beauty of Assayas's mise-en-scène can still be appreciated, but this is no substitute for a decent plot and convincing characters.  All we get are some elegantly composed pictures with precious little holding them together.

There's no doubt that Kristen Stewart is a very capable actress, but when she is called upon to carry every single scene in the film and field the most banal and ineptly contrived of situations it's no wonder she looks bored and uninteresting for at least half of the time.  Assayas's adoration for his leading lady shows in every shot, and it is a fair bet that there is no other film in which the actress's very individual mystique has been more thoroughly utilised.  But cut adrift in this artistically over-egged genre fiasco, Stewart is a lost soul drowning in a sea of lovingly crafted vacuity.  The references to the works of others (the Japanese influence is very noticeable) are so obvious as to make the film look like the most careless and deliberate of pastiches.  Assayas serves up a few decent chills along the way but, with plot digressions that all come to nothing and a resolution that is far too neat for its own good, Personal Shopper is mostly a longwinded gambol through multiple genres that adds up to nothing but acute boredom. Without a doubt, this is Olivier Assayas's least satisfying film to date.

Film Synopsis

When her twin brother Lewis dies suddenly from a heart condition, Maureen, a young American, is profoundly affected.  Years ago, the twins made a pact that whichever of the two died first would make contact with the other after death.  As she waits for Lewis to reach out to her from the spirit world, Maureen becomes disenchanted with her job as a personal shopper to a self-absorbed fashion celebrity.  One day, she begins receiving anonymous messages on her mobile phone.  Someone somewhere is determined to make her life Hell - but who?  As her world continues to fall apart, Maureen begins to encounter terrifying paranormal phenomena that will take her to the limit of sanity...