Personal Shopper
She rides through the streets of Paris on her moped in the cold November air, from boutique to jeweller, blank cheque in hand before she returns to the luxury city apartment of her absent employer. She travels to the sprawling suburban house of parquet floors and creaking doors and walks from room to room like Heinlein’s cat seeking the elusive door into summer, waiting alone through the night to fulfil a promise made long ago.
Maureen Cartwright is the personal shopper for Kyra Gellman, her fame and the demands on her time making it impossible for her to have a normal life which would allow her to undertake the mundane rites of living, and nor would she want to. With Kyra running late for a fashion shoot, Maureen standing in as they prepare the lighting, an assistant whispers “I heard she’s a monster,” and Maureen does not disagree.
Confessing via Skype to her friend Gary that she hates her job, it allows her to get paid to stay in Paris where she needs to be. She researches the Swedish pre-abstract artist Hilma af Klint who moved in spiritualist circles and acted as a medium, and she returns to the house seeking the promised sign from her twin brother Lewis who died months before of the same heart condition which she shares.
Written and directed by Clouds of Sils Maria’s Olivier Assayas and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Personal Shopper reunites him with one of the stars of that film, Twilight and Snow White & The Huntsman’s Kristen Stewart as Maureen, selecting exclusive dresses from Chanel and sparkling bracelets from Cartier one minute and watching online videos of the nineteenth century spiritualists the Fox sisters the next.
A film devoid of emotion which does not challenge the talents of any of the performers, it is carried by an unquestioning credulity on the part of Maureen, as self-absorbed as the unreasonable Kyra who expects apes to come down from the mountains on cue, as convinced of her own powers as those spiritualists she reads about: “When you’re a medium you’re just attuned to a certain vibe.”
Yet when there is a manifestation in the house replete with lights and ectoplasm there is no ambiguity as to whether it was real or only in Maureen’s mind as she runs terrified from the house. Instead, she is more comfortable with the anonymous individual who messages her on an extended cross-channel scene of flirting/stalking as she bends to the will of the stranger and agrees to break the rules of her employment.
That Kyra does not wish Maureen to wear the clothes and shoes she has sourced for charity balls and red carpets is understandable, though it is never made clear if that insecurity extends to demanding that the woman who is in effect her personal stylist dress one step up from a thrift store bag lady, but the whole film is an exercise in incongruity coupled with the obligation to endure Stewart’s near-permanent trademark scowl.
A character study whose principal recites her lines with indifferent disdain, a ghost story with no purpose or resolution, a murder mystery with precisely one suspect, Kyra and Maureen both seek validation in objects and technology rather than people and Assayas’ film is an indulgence similarly lacking in warmth or sense of context, depending on the alleged powers of such as the Fox sisters whose confession of deception is a matter of record.
Personal Shopper is now on general release
