PERSONAL SHOPPER
Fashion victim
released OUT NOW! 2016 | 15 | Blu-ray/dVd/download
Director Olivier assayas Cast Kristen stewart, lars eidinger, sigrid Bouaziz, anders danielsen lie
Although packaged as a horror film, Olivier Assayas’s elegant foray into the supernatural often feels like a celebration of muse Kristen Stewart.
In a role moulded for her slouchy style, Stewart plays Maureen, a young medium living in Paris. By day she drives around the city on her moped picking up clothes for a tyrannical model; by night she trails around an empty mansion trying to make contact with her recently deceased twin.
Following her revelatory performance in Assayas’s Clouds Of Sils Maria, Stewart impresses here. Her face strained and sickly pale, she’s a bundle of barely composed nerves. One scene sees her crying out for her brother’s ghost – “I just need you to fucking talk to me!” – then breaking into tears on the train, her mouth quivering like a violin string.
At its best moments, Personal Shopper sleekly deconstructs well-worn horror tropes. Instead of using a ouija board to contact her brother, for example, Maureen uses her mobile phone. This spills into a chilling extended sequence where Maureen starts receiving a string of text messages from an unknown stalker, giving the film a ripple of psychosexual tension.
As refined as a haute couture gown, Assayas’s brand of horror is one you’ll want to try on again.
Extras A trailer.
As an intern at Pinewood in 1978, Assayas served Charlton Heston tea, and saw filming of Krypton exploding in Superman.