#899: ASSAYAS, Olivier: Personal Shopper (2016)

ASSAYAS, Olivier (France)
Personal Shopper [2016]
Spine #899
Blu-ray

With this intimate supernatural drama, the celebrated French filmmaker Olivier Assayas conjures a melancholy ghost story set in the world of celebrity and haute couture. Starring Kristen Stewart, whose performance in Assayas's Clouds of Sils Maria made her the first American actress to win a César Award, this evocative character study tells the story of a young fashion assistant and spiritual medium who is living in Paris and searching for signs of an afterlife following the sudden death of her twin brother. A stirring depiction of grief in the form of a psychological thriller, Personal Shopper — which won Assayas the best director award at Cannes — is a chilling meditation on modern modes of communication and the way we mourn those we love.

105 minutes

Color
5.1 Surround
in English and French
2:40:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2017

Director/Writer

Olivier Assayas was 61 when he wrote and directed Personal Shopper.

Other Assayas films in the Collection:

#944: Cold Water (1994)
#1074: Irma Vep (1996)
#513: Summer Hours (2008)
#582: Carlos (2010)
#822: Clouds Of Sils Maria (2014)

The Film

Maureen (Kristen Stewart) and her twin brother, Lewis are mediums. They made a pact that when one of them died, the other one would try to seek out their spirit.

Lewis has died, in a big old house in France, where he lived with his girlfriend Lara (Sigrid Bouaziz). Maureen — who is a “personal shopper” for the fashion icon Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten) — gets to work immediately, but fails to connect with any spirits.

**

Assayas says that the story developed around a single image that came to him — a woman on a motorbike, zipping around Paris (he hadn’t filmed in the city in years) …

As the image developed into his story, he saw that she was holding bags at her side as she wriggled in and out of traffic, and that she hated her job, but did it because it paid the rent.

The “ghost” element of the story came about from Assayas’s reading and research … that fertile period between the last years of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, when spiritualism was all the rage. (Recall that the great creator of Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle — was an adherent, as well as Victor Hugo, who makes an appearance in a film within the film!)

**

Texting

A great deal of the film involves scenes of Maureen receiving and replying to texts on her smartphone from an unknown number. Assayas cranks up the suspense in these scenes, which — naturally — have no dialogue, as the camera pushes in tight on the phone’s clicking and beeping.

“Who is this?” she types … could it be Lewis, reaching out from the beyond via 21st-century technology? Or perhaps Ingo (Lars Eidinger), a man she met at Kyra’s, who had told her that he was about to be “dumped” by her …

**

Materialism

Shopping for Kyra’s haute couture, a curator of some design shop shows her some leather pants. Maureen agrees they’re perfect for her boss, and the curator hands them over with a stern warning that they must be returned in a day or two or “she’ll be in big trouble.” (Perhaps they were prototypes, and once they were in production, Kyra would get them then — it’s left unclear.)

Of course, Kyra takes off with the pants to Milan, where Maureen sees on television that she’s wearing them in the show.

**

The one character who is not materialistic or smartphone-addicted is Lara — an old-fashioned woodworker (we briefly see her at work). She is trying to get over Lewis’s death, and is even seeing someone new (she seeks Maureen’s blessing) …

We never see Lara texting.

Film Rating (0-60):

56

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by critic Glenn Kenny.

“In Personal Shopper, Assayas’s interest in the ways technology affects behavior and communication extends into what he has called the ‘invisible world.’ We use something called Wi-Fi to connect our devices to the wider world, and we text with our smartphones, sending our disembodied voices through the air in a process most of us really have no understand of. We trust that the person we think we are communicating with really is that person. Our trust in technology sometimes resembles ardent religious faith. In this atmosphere, perhaps, the idea of a ghost in the machine, or in the cloud, becomes more plausible, more accessible.”

Commentary

None.

Interview

With Assayas.

A director who makes films like this is usually at a loss to use words in an attempt to describe cinema which speaks for itself. Assayas nevertheless gives it the old college try.

2016 Cannes Film Festival

Press conference featuring actor Stewart and other members of the film’s cast and crew.

See above. These pressers are so silly and artificial. The few reporters who actually ask an intelligent question get a somewhat satisfactory response — but most of the stuff was directed at Stewart, like “do you believe in ghosts?” “Did your work on the Twilight series influence your performance in this film?”

She and Assayas deserve better.

Theatrical trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

34

56 + 34 =

90

By Director
By Spine #