Personal Shopper is a movie about a medium/personal shopper, played by Kristen Stewart, who is trying to contact her deceased twin brother so she can move on with her life. Olivier Assayas directed Personal Shopper. I love movies about the supernatural, and I love French movies, but I wish that I had not paid $8 to watch Personal Shopper. I still plan to give Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria a chance.
Personal Shopper is a beautifully filmed movie, and Stewart was a riveting presence to follow, but ultimately Personal Shopper did nothing for me. I love French films because they stubbornly refuse to give in to the sensationalism of American films, and when they do, they approach it in a realistic way that takes into account quotidian realities (see Elle). I love supernatural films because who is not interested in death since it is a journey that all of us must take, and it expresses our fear of pain as we return to dust and face oblivion. I love films that deal with grief such as 45 Years, The Attack, Biutiful and Guillermo del Toro’s films that use varying doses of magical realism to explore the surreal nature of existence and the conception of the communion of the saints both dead and alive.
Sadly Personal Shopper did none of that for me. I saw the preview for Personal Shopper so I knew that there would be at least one sensational moment. There is actually more than one, but they simultaneously felt anticlimactic and exploitive to continue to string the audience along so we would not complain that nothing happened in Personal Shopper, which for the record, I would have preferred. Personal Shopper ends up being a ghost movie that is really the spiritual equivalent of cutting. Personal Shopper’s sensational and supernatural moments fail to create any significant progress because the movie is fractured in its purpose. Personal Shopper wants to be about a lot of things (connection, grief, the nature of having a body and being alive), but it is really about depression, and I am not certain that Assayas consciously committed to that concept.
Personal Shopper reminds me of why I was annoyed at Prometheus. While Assayas is braver than Ridley Scott for openly exploring his less than mainstream ideas (Scott, admit that Space Jesus is your Lord and Savior) and is initially intriguing in introducing the concept of abstract art and using emerging technology to communicate with the dead, it begins to feel less like an intriguing concept and more like I was looking over at someone else’s iPhone because my battery was low. It does provide us with ONE excellent Hitchcockian moment as the texts keep coming, but those concepts could have been introduced in another way and after that scene, that aspect of spiritualism is dropped like a 45 supporter on Facebook.
Kristen Stewart gives credibility to Personal Shopper. She is the anti-Tobey Maguire. She never goes big and starts chewing the scenery. She goes for small details, is stingy with her smile and interest and has a distinct way of moving through the world that you have to find interesting in order to watch the entire film. Her open, but natural anger and annoyance is delicious. Part of the fun of navigating Personal Shopper is living vicariously through other people’s lives that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. She is simultaneously a child playing dress up and an adult who looks at luxury as a tedious chore.
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I may be too black to enjoy this film. It also does not help that I was brought up Christian fundamentalist. If you are familiar with the story of Saul and mediums, it is particularly when you are desperate to hear a dead loved one’s voice that another spirit masquerades as that person to lead you to death and destruction. So every time the titular character demanded more communication from the spirit world then understandably ran away screaming, I kept thinking, “Well, maybe then don’t do that.” Girl, stop staying in empty dark houses and asking for more contact. I found that aspect of Personal Shopper so frustrating. Ghosts are so inconsiderate. Stop breaking glasses and think of the dogs. (Side note: Personal Shopper did not have the dogs going crazy or barking, and even though that is a cheap indication of haunting, there were plenty of cheap indications of haunting so I’m disappointed that they did not use that part of the legend.)
I was also annoyed that there were only a couple of scenes where she was worried about the practical realities of her job: negotiating her fee and getting the pants back. After her employer dies, she is not even a little bit worried that she will be on the hook for the cost of everything she did that day. To be fair, she did just have a traumatic experience, but that concern would be running in the back of my mind. Personal Shopper only uses the Cartier jewelry to show that the killer has access to her.
The murderer should have just worn a sign saying that he was a murderer. Did that reveal surprise anyone? I know that he is not necessarily introduced as an element of suspense, but as her (false) link to the spiritual world and the danger of desperate communication. Personal Shopper does not show us what happened in the hotel room. It does seem to imply that the murderer wanted to know if she told police about him, and she set up the sting. It was an elaborate excuse to use elevator doors and automatic doors to imply that the brother was there and left, or it was just an elevator and automatic door opening with nothing visible to trigger the sensor. There is a moment when you wonder if the murderer killed her, and it was her spirit that was leaving. If that happened, I would have applauded Personal Shopper. It was a disappointing missed opportunity, which makes the actual ending land flat.
Personal Shopper teases the idea that all of this may be in her mind (is she telekinetic-just kidding, Assayas was not going there), but also clearly indicates that it is not. Personal Shopper also seemed to want the audience to question whether her employer actually existed because the titular character and Kira were never in the same place, but once again, we know they are different people, and Kira was fine. Personal Shopper likes to make us question something then pulls back. It wants to be sensational, but also fears the cheapness of that desire, like the character. Ultimately Personal Shopper is about a woman who only finds comfort existing in everyone else’s world instead of creating her own. Her problem is not that she cannot move on. Her problem is that she cannot stay.