Year: 2016
Director: Olivier Assayas
Country: France
Language: English
Olivier Assayas has been a film director since the late 1980's. A former critic for the legendary Cahiers Du Cinema Assayas was incredibly knowledgeable about his art and thus makes pictures that often defy our expectations of genre, blending them in unexpected and fascinating ways. Personal Shopper, his second collaboration with Kristen Stewart, may be one of his most perplexing features.
A personal shopper (Kristen Stewart) in Paris refuses to leave the city until she makes contact with her twin brother who previously died there. Her life becomes more complicated when a mysterious person contacts her via text message.
Personal Shopper both is and isn't a ghost story. We see old spooky houses, creaky wooden floors, ethereal figures floating and spewing ectoplasm, a gruesome murder, an ominous secret, creepy texts. We go back and forth from horror to thriller, from the living to the dead. It's effective in pulling at our emotions and making us desire to see the outcome of it all. We aren't sure if our protagonist will make it out alive by the end.
The picture is a rather interesting dissection about the nature of grief. When a loved one dies we too want to hear signs, any kind of sign, that they are doing well in the after-life. We make big deals out of small meaningless events, as does our main character. Unfortunately much of the picture is slow & tedious, it feels like days until we get to a juicy part of the story. The drama takes a while to set-in, and it's perfectly understandable if most viewers can't wait that long.
Personal Shopper's ambiguous ending left audiences at Cannes Film Festival angry; they boo-ed as its imprecision can feel immediately disappointing. Upon my first viewing I had no idea if I enjoyed what I had just seen. I still have no idea, but I suppose if a picture gets me thinking it can't be terrible right?
No comments:
Post a Comment