Personal Shopper Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov, October 24, 2017



The shopper

The great George Orwell is credited to have said the following: "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." Olivier Assayas' latest film,, might very well be one of the best examples that Orwell was right.Kristen Stewart is Maureen, a young American woman who lives in the City of Lights and makes ends meet as a 'personal shopper'. She is always on the move buying or renting ultra-expensive dresses, shoes, and jewelry for a very high-profile celebrity (Nora von Waldstätten) with a seemingly bottomless bank account. Most of the time Maureen shops in the French capital, but occasionally she also travels to London to pick up a rare piece from a local boutique that the celebrity absolutely must have in her wardrobe. Maureen is fast, reliable, and with the same body structures as her employer -- the perfect person for the job.But Maureen is not a professional shopaholic and there is an entirely different reason why she is in Paris -- she is a medium and is waiting to establish contact with her deceased brother. You see, they were born with serious heart abnormalities and as they grew older and their conditions worsened the two agreed that the first to die will try to contact the other from well, whatever that place is that the soul is dispatched to after it exists the body. So, while doing all the expensive shopping for her employer, Maureen is always on the lookout for signs that her dead brother is trying to get in touch with her.Maureen frequently visits the empty house where her brother used to live and from time to time sees and hears things, but the signs are never as clear as she needs them to be and she can't quite tell if it is him trying to break though the invisible barrier that is keeping him on the other side. At first the experiences frustrate her, but when a mysterious stranger begins sending her messages on her phone and engages her in an ongoing bizarre conversation she concludes that she has made the wrong contact and panics.Assayas is a very talented director who understands how to create unique ambience and there is a good portion of this film where he does precisely that. The trouble with it is that here he essentially uses it only as a bartender's shaker that shakes up a few interesting but ultimately incompatible ideas about the afterlife, wandering souls, and paranormal experiences. Unsurprisingly, the end product that comes out of the shaker is more than a bit suspicious.The decision to cast Stewart as the ill medium is also rather strange because virtually from the moment she steps in front of the camera until the final sequence in the garden she looks completely detached from her character  and not by design. Perhaps some of her behavior can be explained with the refusal of her character's mind to decisively separate the real from the unreal, but there are so many examples where the body language and attitude make it awfully easy to tell that Stewart is actually bored to tears.The subplot that sends the medium to the French police is also very weak. It gives Assayas a few extra opportunities to expand the narrative, but as it quickly becomes obvious for all the wrong reasons. A very uneven film and a rare misfire from Assayas.