Per­son­al Shopper

When it comes to pro­ject­ing anguish and ambi­gu­i­ty, there is no one bet­ter than Kris­ten Stew­art. In Per­son­al Shop­per, she offers a refined ver­sion of her Twi­light saga per­for­mance, which oscil­lates between dis­creet twitch­i­ness and vocal out­bursts, as if emo­tions had to fight against in order to be felt.

Olivi­er Assayas employs this anx­i­ety-based per­sona with great pre­ci­sion. He also takes it as a foun­da­tion on which to build a com­plete, mul­ti-faceted char­ac­ter, one that push­es Stew­art to fur­ther explore her vast act­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Grief and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty become two new strings to her bow, which she uses with (occa­sion­al­ly too much) brava­do. Her now-estab­lished tense style means that she’s nev­er quite there; in Per­son­al Shop­per, Assayas offers ten­ta­tive answers as to where exact­ly she is, plac­ing her char­ac­ter Mau­reen some­where between death and a world of ghost­ly appari­tions, as she grieves the pass­ing of her twin broth­er by wait­ing for him to give her a sign from beyond the grave. She floats between the earth and the heavens.

Mau­reen is the per­son­al shop­per of the title and even­tu­al­ly returns to the clothes that she buys her client. She tries to ben­e­fit from the aggran­dis­ing pow­er of fash­ion and beau­ty and define her­self beyond grief. This shal­low­ness is at odds with the depth of her anguish and spir­i­tu­al­ism, but this con­trast appears real­is­tic: she is look­ing for an easy escape from her sad­ness and tries to anchor her­self in phys­i­cal real­i­ty via mate­ri­al­ism. By let­ting Mau­reen do things she actu­al­ly finds despi­ca­ble and lat­er regrets, Assayas rais­es her to a trag­ic and human lev­el, He makes her com­pelling and inscrutable.

How­ev­er, while the direc­tor excels at con­vey­ing the strange­ness of her behav­iour, he some­times can­not avoid look­ing ridicu­lous him­self. This might be because Stew­art has now tru­ly become the incar­na­tion of a pro­found com­plex­i­ty that the triv­ial sat­is­fac­tion of a pair of high heels or a glit­tery dress could not seduce.

This awk­ward­ness also aris­es from Maureen’s search for mean­ing and the over­whelm­ing (yet authen­tic) pres­ence of tech­nol­o­gy. She reads about art on her iPad. She talks to her employ­er on the phone. She sees her boyfriend via Skype. This inter­play between mys­ti­cism and tech crescen­dos in a cap­ti­vat­ing, creepy yet often amus­ing sequence dur­ing which Mau­reen has a lengthy text con­ver­sa­tion with an unknown num­ber who seems to know a lot about her.

It is one of the most accu­rate cin­e­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the all-too com­mon prac­tice of tex­ting. By sim­ply show­ing Mau­reen going about her var­i­ous tasks while keep­ing this bizarre con­ver­sa­tion going through­out her day, Assayas reveals the odd­ness of our way of life. Vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies allow us to con­stant­ly occu­py sev­er­al spaces at once. Togeth­er, the mes­sag­ing and the ghost­ly aspect of the sto­ry serve to high­light Maureen’s displacement.

Yet the film’s dénoue­ment is too on-the-nose after such a strange­ly stim­u­lat­ing con­coc­tion of mate­ri­al­ism, mur­der and spir­i­tu­al­ism. Assayas’ per­cep­tion of tech­nol­o­gy remains the most intrigu­ing take­away from Per­son­al Shop­per: as much as our devices dis­con­nect us from the present of our lived expe­ri­ence, they offer an answer our search for the unknown.