Shop ‘til your heart stops
A mopey Kristen Stewart deals with death, ghosts, and the spectres of conspicuous consumption in Personal Shopper
PERSONAL SHOPPER Starring Kristen Stewart. In English and French, with English subtitles. Rated 14A
Kristen Stewart, who always has a somewhat 2 haunted look, ain’t afraid of no ghost. At least, that’s what she thinks when she goes looking for trouble in Personal Shopper, the latest from French writer-director Olivier Assayas, who prides himself on tonal variety, jumping from stylish vampire romps (Irma Vep) to Truffaut-like family tales (Summer Hours).
Shopper has a bit of everything, in that it takes current concerns seriously—are we in thrall to the spectre of our cellphones?—but dabbles in genre conventions for the sake of sheer entertainment. In the filmmaker’s last effort, Clouds of Sils Maria, Stewart played the grumpy assistant to Juliette Binoche’s waning movie star. Here, she’s the blandly named Maureen Cartwright, cranky clothes carrier and errand girl for a Kardashianlike model-celebrity (Nora von Waldstätten, also from Sils Maria) based in a rain-dappled Paris.
Some people have noticed that the couture she borrows for her boss looks better on Maureen. But her real thing, aside from smoking and moping, is trying to get in touch with her twin brother. He recently died, you see, from a rare heart condition she shares. And they made a pact, perhaps unique in all of human history, that the first to go would attempt to contact the other.
This means staying in the big, spooky house where he used to live (in Prague, although the new location goes unnamed). Apparitions do appear, but what are they? Other spirits follow her on train trips to London and elsewhere, and there’s even a weirdly self-contained murder mystery, in case looking at Cartier jewellery and sexy S&M wear isn’t enough— even with Marlene Dietrich and medieval music in the background. Assayas is saying something about overly conspicuous consumption, but what is it?
With her searching eyes and sharply triangular face (like an Emma Watson with problems), Stewart is a strangely compelling stand-in for our millennial anxieties. But her pitchless speech is even more monotonous than usual, and there’s something numbingly interchangeable about all the people and events in the director’s coldly sumptuous world. Ghosts might be out to get us, but it’s not really personal. > KEN EISNER
WILSON Starring Woody Harrelson. Rated 14A
A rare comic-book movie that improves on its graphic-novel original, Wilson has been expanded and humanized by its original author, Daniel Clowes. Of course, there’s also the bearded presence of Woody Harrelson, who plays the tale’s one-named hero as resolutely cheerful in the face of sequential disasters.
The Seattle-based cartoonist, whose Ghost World proved influential in many ways, drew every page of the 2010 book as stand-alone strips in different styles. That approach can’t be duplicated on-screen, but Clowes’s script, through the agency of director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins), melds contrasting tones into a more unified whole and fills in what was missing from the tale of a rude, selfish character who only belatedly examines his own shortcomings.
The funny/sad movie is definitely not for people who want to see heartwarming family reunions, or heartwarming anything, really. Wilson is pretty much an asshole—a guy who’ll ask a stranger what he does for a living and then make fun of him for it. A loser with no prospects, he somehow wields the arrogance of utter defeat as a weapon. But Wilson really does love his dog, and when he describes himself as “a people person”, it’s not meant sarcastically. He yearns for deeper connections, and this is tested when his long-estranged father suddenly dies.
Consequently, Wilson heads back to his old St. Louis neighbourhood (the whole movie was shot in Minnesota) and also looks for his ex-wife, Pippi, who walked 17 years earlier. Hers was the most underwritten part of the book, but a volatile Laura Dern and the fleshed-out screenplay don’t let that happen here. Turns out Pippi didn’t have the abortion she announced when they split. And they haphazardly search for the fruit of their loins—an angry, plus-size goth girl (impressive newcomer Isabella Amara)—to make their temporary insta-family complete.
There’s no doubt that Harrelson’s character will remain too caustic, and too impenetrably weird, for many viewers. But there is also dark fun ahead for those willing to take Wilson’s bumpy ride. > KEN EISNER
AFTER THE STORM
Starring Hiroshi Abe. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
Coming soon after his bittersweet Our Little Sister, which found a family expanding against its own expectations, Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda takes a tenderly comedic look at a disintegrating family, and what potentially remains of the love that was once there in abundance. It’s easily one of his most satisfying efforts to date. Unusually tall, handsome action-movie veteran Hiroshi Abe plays Ryôta Shinoda, a not-so-younganymore novelist who hasn’t followed up on early success. Ryôta can’t quite bring himself to write but doesn’t do anything else well, apparently—unless you count long-shot gambling and some shambling private-eye work for a local hustler. His immaturity has cost him jobs and a marriage, but he’s still attempting to get back in the good graces of his understandably fed-up ex-wife (Yôko Maki) and their easygoing little boy (Taiyô Yoshizawa).
Perhaps this is a script deficiency, but our guy is surprisingly inarticulate for a writer, and he makes some pretty dumb decisions. But Ryôta does listen to his earthy mother (Kirin Kiki), who does her best—in Ozu-like fashion—to keep conflicting sides in harmony. It’s really the writer-director’s eye for ordinary human contact that stays with you, along with his propensity for suggesting deeper meanings in the silences between words. He also manages to hit some extra-sweet notes about this family in particular.
The film is slightly attenuated at almost two hours, but its long-simmering feelings (and longrunning jokes) pay off when the titular typhoon arrives, throwing everyone into a quietly humane space that, if not quite happy, flourishes where hope has been carefully planted. > KEN EISNER
SIERANEVADA Starring Mimi Brãnescu. In Romanian, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
In The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Luis Buñuel’s classic 1972 satire, corrupt Parisians trek from one meeting spot to another, in search of food that never arrives. The working stiffs of Sieranevada do eventually get to the grub they’ve been waiting for. But at almost three hours long, the new Romanian film— by turns amusing, shocking, and tediously repetitive—will test the endurance of viewers who haven’t eaten in a while.
Here, friends and family of a recently deceased patriarch gather in a crowded Bucharest apartment. As usual, writer-director Cristi Puiu uses a microcosm of Romanian society to sketch out more intimate shifts in history. In his The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu, from 2005, this was done through the search for just the right hospital. Now, almost 30 years since the death of dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, changes in daily life are reflected by mourners who must sit through
long-standing arguments, a lot of smoking (mostly in the kitchen), and a visit from a rambling Orthodox priest, who unleashes heartfelt hymns just as you’re ready to write off religion.
Notably uninterested in handsome images or even attractive light, the director’s camera moves mainly through the agency of the family’s eldest son, Lary (Mimi Brănescu), a doctor currently dealing in medical supplies. Not a great listener, he’s in the doghouse with his elegantly dressed wife (Catalina Moga) for buying their daughter the wrong Disney-princess outfit. We change rooms or leave the apartment mainly to travel with Lary.
Along this claustrophobic route, increasingly hungry (and drunk) relatives discuss 9/11 theories and the then-recent Charlie Hebdo massacre, the value of Communism in Romanian history, and whether reprobate uncles or drunken Croats should attend funeral parties. The misspelled title is never explained. Whether it refers to a faraway state of mind or mysterious mountains of state secrecy is left to the imagination, and appetite, of the audience. > KEN EISNER
THE SECOND TIME AROUND Starring Linda Thorson. Rated PG
Love is lovelier the second time 2
around. So sang Frank, and it’s a mark of storytelling obviousness that the tune (by Sinatra regulars Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen) is quoted halfway into the movie of the same name.
Directed and cowritten by Leon Marr, who hasn’t made a theatrical feature since 1986’s Dancing in the Dark, this Time Around is an amiable, Tv-grade vehicle for Canadian actors of a certain age. Stuart Margolin and Linda Thorson play Isaac and Catherine, old-timers who meet when the latter has a bad fall that lands her in an assisted-living facility in an unnamed Toronto.
A WASP-Y opera lover from a wealthy background, she initially gets on the grouchy side of Isaac, a Holocaust survivor and lifelong tailor who has simply been biding his time (and drinking) since his wife died some years earlier. The place is a hotbed of griping and card-playing, peopled by such recognizable faces as those of Jayne Eastwood, Paul Soles, and the late Don Francks.
Catherine resents being dumped there by her overworked daughter (Laura de Carteret) but does get visits from her punky grandchild (Alexis Harrison), who brings her an opera-loaded ipod. This, in turn, is shared with Isaac, who doesn’t know from Verdi but remembers old Yiddish lullabies. Not much is made of the new duo’s chalk-and-gefilte-fish differences, so the script has to work extra-hard to keep them apart once the romance heats up.
The dialogue, while delivered with appropriate good humour, can be remarkably slapdash in the exposition department. There’s nothing particularly visual about the movie, and Marr’s attempt to impose a stylized set piece at the very end of such an unassuming venture is a silly misstep. Still, it’s a pleasant vehicle for Rockford Files veteran Margolin, who’s good when his shtick settles in, and especially for Thorson, who still has a nice supply of the screen zip she showed when, daringly enough, she replaced Diana Rigg in The Avengers. > KEN EISNER