X
- 2017
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 45 m
- 2017
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 45 m
Summary Maureen (Kristen Stewart) has a job she hates: seeing to the wardrobe of a media celebrity. She couldn’t find anything better to pay for her stay in Paris. And wait. Wait for a sign from the spirit of her twin brother, who died a few months earlier. Until then, her life will stay on hold.
Directed By: Olivier Assayas
Written By: Olivier Assayas
- 2017
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 45 m
- 2017
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 45 m
Personal Shopper
77
6.5
Where to Watch
Summary Maureen (Kristen Stewart) has a job she hates: seeing to the wardrobe of a media celebrity. She couldn’t find anything better to pay for her stay in Paris. And wait. Wait for a sign from the spirit of her twin brother, who died a few months earlier. Until then, her life will stay on hold.
Directed By: Olivier Assayas
Written By: Olivier Assayas
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 38 Critic Reviews
77
79% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
21% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 38 Critic Reviews
77
79% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
21% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
A riveting, impossible-to-shake masterwork that leaves the audience spooked, not by its telling but by its commitment to abstract themes of grief, solitude and coming of age.
Personal Shopper is enigmatic and inventive. This is daring and rule-bending filmmaking at a minimalist scale, a personal, contemplative horror movie, stripped of observable fright but full of unease.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 114 User Ratings
6.5
64% Positive
73 Ratings
73 Ratings
27% Mixed
31 Ratings
31 Ratings
9% Negative
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 114 User Ratings
6.5
64% Positive
73 Ratings
73 Ratings
27% Mixed
31 Ratings
31 Ratings
9% Negative
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
This is quite possibly the smartest meditation on the narrative unreliability of cinema since Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining". As a mystery, it's absorbing and with some genuinely hair-rising moments, spectacular directing from Olivier Assayas, and one of the best ending lines in recent memory.
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A ghost story which is not a ghost story, more a meditation on what we have that is personal. The film is entirely about Maureen (Stewart), all other characters are peripheral and inform her story. And the film succeeds because Kristen Stewart is so watchable, so real. All her slightly uncomfortable mannerisms, her vulnerability and strength are very approachable. A film that never tries to do more than it intends.
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The film explores the extent to which Olivier Assayas’s characters have always found, and lost, their identities through the aid of their surroundings.
You can’t stop watching this film, even if you can’t always express in words what you’re seeing. Intuition fills in the gaps.
As per Assayas’ custom, the film is chock-full of fascinating themes and ideas and his indisputable flair as a director makes it compulsively watchable.
The ghost story gets to be silly, and wants to have it both ways, as ghost stories often do, on the question of whether various signs from beyond the grave are real or imagined.... Yet Ms. Stewart’s portrayal has the ring of truth and the urgency of terror.
This aggravatingly empty would-be suspense piece puts all its trust in its star to save the day, but even this compulsively watchable performer can’t elevate such a vapid, undeveloped screenplay.
After unequivocally loving Olivier Assayas' 2014 effort, Clouds of Sils Maria, his follow-up is a lot tougher of a nut to crack. Part-thriller, part-horror, part-mood piece, Personal Shopper truly evades definition. It operates at a safe distance from the viewer and refuses to be defined. By the end of the film, what is real and what is not real is really next to impossible to pin down. Personally, I have a variety of working theories, but whether or not any of them are actually accurate is another matter in and of itself. What is clear, however, is that this is a film about grief, identity, and mortality. Above all, it is a thriller that sets out to unsettle its audiences and make them think. To do so, Assayas' film is purposefully complex, dense, and tonally off. Even the editing, with many scenes ending abruptly and fading to black, is used to throw off the audience and make us squirm. Of course, this has the by-product of making the film appear to be lacking satisfaction. In many ways, however, this merely mirrors the issues of Maureen (Kristen Stewart) after losing her twin brother Lewis. Complicated, distant, and forever denying viewer access to its idiosyncrasies, it is no wonder that Personal Shopper has divided audiences.
One of the most obvious themes that Assayas introduces into the film is grief. Working as a personal shopper for model Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten) to support herself while also operating as a medium for the couple set to move into Lewis' old home, Maureen is constantly looking for a sign. Before he died, the two had promised to leave the other a sign. Whoever died first had to let the other know they were in the afterlife. Waiting around in Paris for Lewis to come give her that sign, she encounters a ghost that is most definitely not Lewis and also begins to receive mysterious text messages from an unknown number. While she is shaken, she approaches every situation where a ghost may be present with the same question: Are you Lewis? She cannot get him off of her mind and is constantly seeking to find out if he is alright and at peace. Assayas' film shows how grief can control one's way of life to the point that she refuses to meet up with boyfriend Gary (Ty Olwin) in Oman for a vacation. Instead, she does a job she hates for a woman she hates just to justify staying in Paris. In essence, she is a prisoner of her grief, which is not an original theme by any means (The Babadook being a recent example), but is well-executed in the film. Assayas injects incredible tension and fear as we wait to find out if the ghosts and noises she encounters are truly Lewis or some other being.
However, I have my doubts that Maureen is actually a medium. Whether Lewis was or not is unclear, but towards the end of the film, Maureen remarks how Lewis was always more in tune with that and she usually just copied him. It is entirely plausible that Maureen is not a medium at all. Rather, she is merely a girl suffering from a lost identity due to the shared one she had with Lewis. As he was her twin, it is possible she is trying a route he had taken in order to reach him. However, it does not work and either she meets unfriendly forces or she imagines them all. The latter, however, seems most likely with how awful she is at detecting presences. She notices obvious things in the walls or glasses breaking, but never seems to aware a ghost is with her until it is literally right on top of her. If she were a medium, it would stand to reason that she would be better at identifying when they are near. Furthermore, the ghostly text messages she receives where the sender claims to always be around her and sees what she is doing and wearing, certainly hint that there is a ghost around her. Possibly Lewis, the sender does seem to be a bit odd, but largely harmless for Maureen. However, what is clear is that either Maureen is not a medium or she is an entirely dreadful one, making it unlikely she ever actually encounters ghosts. Rather, it is merely a machination of her mind used to cope with the loss of Lewis in the only way he knew how.
One of the most important things that this ghost texter allows her to confront, however, is her sense of identity. Now, this is where this interpretation may lose some people, but I warn you that this is a film that demands multiple views. Coming off of one viewing, it is entirely possible I am off base here. Yet, there are three possible routes to take in regards to Maureen's sense of identity. One is the most logical one based on the film. Through encouraging her to try on Kyra's clothing, the sender allows her to try on a new personality. After expressing that she does not want to be herself, but is unsure who she wants to be, the sender allows her to try out new personalities to find one that fits her.
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I hate to jump on the bandwagon of hate for this movie (or any film in general), but Personal Shopper just plainly felt like a hack job by Oliver Assayas. It's described that the script for the film came from a failed American production, which makes sense, because it felt like the director was trying to salvage the remnants of an original idea expanding it with additional material. The result is a cobbled together mess that's not really about anything. Other than it feeling phony, the production, acting and directing is solid, though I hated the editing, the constant fade-outs really got on my nerves. Personal Shopper is far from terrible, it's mildly engaging and I did not hate it, my biggest issue is that it is a sham that for some reason made it on to the Criterion collection.
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Terrible BORING NOTHING HAPPENS BUT..............ARTYS FARTSY CRAP....AVOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Production Company
CG Cinéma,
Vortex Sutra,
Sirena Film,
Detailfilm,
Arte France Cinéma,
ARTE,
Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR),
ARTE,
Canal+,
Ciné+,
SCOPE Invest
Release Date Mar 10, 2017
Duration 1 h 45 m
Rating R
Tagline A film written and directed by Olivier Assayas
Awards
International Online Cinema Awards (INOCA)
• 5 Wins & 6 Nominations
International Cinephile Society Awards
• 1 Win & 5 Nominations
Fright Meter Awards
• 3 Nominations
