You won’t be able to take your eyes off Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper for a moment
REVIEW: Personal Shopper’s saviour is Kristen Stewart. Your mind way wander, but you won’t be able to take your eyes off her for a moment.
Leigh Paatsch
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PERSONAL SHOPPER (MA15+)
Director: Olivier Assayas (Clouds Of Sils Maria)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie.
Rating: three stars
Caught between a good buy and a goodbye
WHAT we have here is a ghost story with a difference, albeit one more confounding than compelling.
The most accessible entry point for Australian viewers will be the casting of American star Kristen Stewart in the lead role of this French-made drama.
Stewart has been making a splash far from the Hollywood mainstream in recent years, and her range as an actor has expanded well beyond her days as the pouty poster girl of Twilight.
Stewart plays Maureen, a young American woman working in Paris as a stylist to the stars.
By day, Maureen reluctantly gives in to the high-pressure demands of a job she no longer finds satisfying.
By night, Maureen cannot resist being swept away by the memory of her recently deceased twin brother.
The siblings had made a pact that whoever dies first would send some kind of signal from the other side. Now Maureen is obsessed with making a big thing of any small sign she can see.
Maureen can sense his presence in small rooms and wide open spaces. There are times where that presence takes a spectral form visible to the naked eye.
Then there are those mysterious bursts of text messages, hailing from an unknown number, but dealing in thoughts and facts known only to Maureen and her twin.
The supernatural aspect of the story is not always its true driving force, and the film’s caginess in showing its true hand will irritate some viewers.
The saving grace is the commanding presence of Stewart in virtually every scene of the picture. Your mind way wander, but you won’t be able to take your eyes off her for a moment.
Originally published as You won’t be able to take your eyes off Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper for a moment
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