Personal Shopper
Director: Olivier Assayas
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 1.0
"Medium" Maureen (Kristen Stewart), who works as an assistant to busy and snotty celeb Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten) - buying her clothes from some of the most expensive boutiques in Paris - starts getting strange text messages that she's convinced are from her late twin brother. Assayas has been pretty hit or miss for me, but I think one belongs in the sizeable reject pile: it's spiritualism treated superficially and, in one ridiculous scene, there's an actual ghost spewing up ectoplasm (so what are you making, Olivier, a horror movie or a Bergman-esque exploration of death?). Stewart is adept at conveying discomfort and anxiety, but those texting scenes really slow down the movie - when the identity of the secret communicator is revealed, it's the first time anything in this seems 'real' and 'genuine' (of course it's the lover enacting revenge - now there's a storyline that could have been explored further).
