“Personal Shopper,” the hypnotic and quietly unsettling new
film from French director Olivier Assayas, asks us to consider the concept of
ghosts in more of a subjective sense rather than an objective one. Ghosts
aren’t empirical beings that wander around the land of the living on their own
but entities born from our own emotional state of mind. That’s why some people
claim to experience ghostly presences while others don’t. They’re projections of
our fears and anxieties, our guilt and sorrows, our regrets and even our
curiosity. Ghosts can be a source of terror and torment but they can also be a
source of self-help. Someone who goes to a Medium or Psychic to make contact
with a deceased loved one does so for his or her own well-being, for a sense of
emotional closure. Perhaps that person feels guilty for their loved ones death
or they just haven’t accepted that they’re gone.
Maureen (Kristen Stewart), the protagonist of “Personal
Shopper” hasn’t gotten over the death of her twin brother Lewis. So she waits
patiently, hoping to make contact with him. She currently lives in Paris (where
he lived) and works as a personal shopper for a fashion model to pay the bills,
a job she hates but does well. Maureen’s been there for a little over three
months and little progress has been made. She’s beginning to grow restless and
agitated, struggling to keep her mental composure. It’s at this point that she
starts conversing with a mysterious ghost via text message as she travels
around Europe on various shopping excursions.
The ghost is a peculiar one to say the least. Sometimes it
teases and toys with Maureen, other times it acts like a psychiatrist, asking
her tough questions and forcing her to confront repressed feelings. And
sometimes it can be erratic and intimidating, snapping at her like an unstable
stalker. The ghost is a manifestation of her distraught, unbalanced state of
mind that finds her at the right time. In her interactions with this entity,
Maureen is able work through her problems; she comes face to face with her deep
seeded anxieties and insecurities, not just in regards to her dead brother but
in regards to her own sense of self purpose and uncertain future. Right now
she’s on a clear mission, (to make contact with her brother) a mission that
guides her and gives her purpose. Though once she makes contact, what then?
What’s will she do next? What will her purpose be? And when she does make
contact with Lewis will that really bring her closure? These questions (and
others) haunt Maureen at all times.
The tense, sometimes humorous, sometimes tender text message
conversations are among the best scenes in the entire film. Watching Maureen’s
progression (from initially resisting the ghost’s digital beckons, to slowly
giving into its games and interrogations and ultimately opening herself up
emotionally) is endlessly absorbing. “Personal Shopper” is a poignant and
thoughtful portrait of personal grief and acceptance with the exhilarating slow
burn pacing and structuring of a psychological thriller. Assayas lets the plot
unfold with a subtle, unassuming tension and doesn’t spoon-feed the audience.
Details concerning character and background are revealed organically, often
times through casual conversation and some things are even left unstated.
Though “Personal Shopper” wouldn’t
work nearly as well without Stewart’s understatedly magnetic performance. Her
natural, low-key onscreen presence is both comforting and hypnotic—she’s in
nearly every frame of “Personal Shopper” and you can’t take your eyes off her. As
the resilient but damaged Maureen, Stewart exudes an unshakable confidence and
put-together-ness that allows her to function in her life as a personal shopper
and also masks an internal emotional fragility threatening to overtake her. The
brief moments where she allows herself to breakdown and succumb to her
overwhelming grief are heart wrenching. In her interactions with the other characters
she can be calmly snarky and quietly compassionate. Through her nuanced work
here, Stewart continues to prove she’s one of the best working actors.
“Personal Shopper” stumbles a bit
when it deals with a murder mystery subplot.
It’s fun to watch in the moment
(Assayas treats it with the same tautness as the rest of the picture)
but it ultimately fizzles out, making you wonder why it was there in the first
place. Then again, I could be wrong about that, in fact I could be wrong about
my overall summation of the film--in regards to how it views
ghosts/spirituality. Assayas wisely doesn’t make any definitive statements when
it comes to the events and ideas in the picture, meaning you can interpret it
any number of ways. “Personal Shopper” is a deceptively complex, intense and
emotionally rewarding experience.
A-
No comments:
Post a Comment