Personal Shopper (2017)

Director: Olivier Assayas

Writer: Olivier Assayas (Screenplay)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Andres Danielsen Lie, Ty Olwin, Benjamin Biolay

Plot: A personal shopper in Paris refuses to leave the city until she makes contact with her twin brother who previously died there. Her life becomes more complicated when a mysterious person contacts her via text message.

There may be spoilers the rest of the review

Verdict: Overly Almost Pointless Story

Story: Personal Shopper starts as Maureen Cartwright (Stewart) is bought into a home to communicate with the dead in France for Lara (Bouaziz) on her first night in the house she does feel the presence. Maureen also works for a high society personal shopper in Paris where she gets to handle the clothing people could only imagine affording.

We see how Maureen is tired with her role in Paris is staying solely to communicate with her dead twin brother because the two made a pledge to communicate if one died the other would communicate to prove he was a medium to the dead. Maureen finds her life turned upside when she witnesses a ghostly image within the house but it is when she receives random text messages from an unknown caller.

Thoughts on Personal Shopper

Characters/Performance – Maureen is a personal shopper who is desperate to learn if she can still communicate with her dead twin brother. She finds herself not enjoying her career choice and being pushed around by an anonymous texter. The rest of the characters are only in a few scenes which show the life that Maureen is going through.

Performance wise, Stewart is great in the leading role needing to carry the film being in every single scene. The rest of the cast do well but are not involved too much with each scene.

Story – My personal overall feelings for this film are pretty clear, I found most of the film almost pointless, now I say these words because we do have three odd stories going on. First we have the search for the dead brother’s spirit, this is fine, then we have the whole game about trying on the cloths, again fine, and thirdly we have the idea the Maureen is searching for her own identity, again fine but mixing them all together we never get enough focus on what was going on between each part of the story and left wondering just which part of the story we are going to be picking up next.

Mystery/Thriller – There is a mystery and when it comes forward we are interested but it does get forgotten in places. We are not going to be kept on the edge of our sea through our experience of this film.

Settings – We are in Paris for most of the film which should make for a great backdrop but the truth is we could have been anywhere for this film.

Final Thoughts – There is so much potential in this film but the truth is that it doesn’t hit the marks it needs to.

Overall: Disappoints on many levels.

Rating

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