Personal Shopper

Dir: Olivier Assayas 1hr 45mins (15)

Disturbing ghost story with Kristen Stewart

Olivier Assayas’ “brazenly unconventional ghost story” has many twists and turns, said Guy Lodge in Time Out, but as you watch, one thing becomes dazzlingly clear: Kristen Stewart – once best known as the teenage star of the Twilight films – has matured into “one hell of an actress”. In Personal Shopper, she plays Maureen, a young American who is in Paris, working for a pampered German supermodel/ fashionista (Nora von Waldstätten) – and grieving her recently deceased twin brother. Maureen seems to be able to summon the spirits of the dead, but in Paris, she experiences a more contemporary chill: a series of text messages from an unknown source. Tonally, Personal Shopper is all over the place, said Olly Richards in Empire. One moment it is genuinely creepy, the next, it’s just plain silly. Yet Stewart’s performance is so powerful, and the film’s atmosphere so enveloping, it’s never less than transfixing. Really? With half of it consisting of Stewart staring at her phone, I found this art-house film remarkably dull, said Henry Fitzherbert in the Sunday Express – “pointless and plotless”.