Personal Shopper (2016)

Personal Shopper starts like a thriller and then refuses to become a genre film. There are ghosts, but it isn’t a horror film. There is a mystery, but it doesn’t get solved. Yet in the presence of Maureen — the character Kristen Stewart creates — 105 minutes flow by with a strangely absorbing quality. Rating: ★4.5.

What it’s about — A woman who is both a medium and a personal shopper

Maureen (Kristen Stewart) works in Paris as a personal shopper for a celebrity. She tours high-end boutiques buying clothes and accessories for her employer, but is forbidden to wear any of it herself. She has another identity: she is a medium. Her twin brother recently died of a heart condition, and before he passed, the two of them promised that whoever died first would send a signal to the living one. Maureen waits in the house where her brother used to live for that signal. Then one day, a series of text messages from an unknown sender begins arriving on her phone.

Direction — When text messages become horror

Director Olivier Assayas deliberately unsettles genre conventions in this film. The ghost scenes exist not as tools of fear but as externalizations of Maureen’s inner state. The smartphone text message sequence demonstrates how everyday communication can become a source of nameless threat in modern life — and these scenes are strangely frightening. Text messages, the most mundane of media, become a source of dread.

The film uses Parisian spaces in an unusual way. The contrast between the world filled with glamorous clothes and luxury goods and Maureen’s empty interior is visually embodied. The scene in which she secretly tries on her employer’s dress is one of the film’s most powerful moments — appearing not as a simple act of transgression but as an attempt to briefly enter someone else’s life in order to confirm her own existence.

Performance — The grief flowing beneath the expression

Kristen Stewart received near-Best Actress level recognition at Cannes for this role. What she shows here is something constantly flowing beneath an expression with all emotion stripped away. The dialogue is sparse, and most scenes find her alone or in conversation with presences on screen — yet Maureen’s grief and anxiety, and a kind of strange courage, can be felt through the skin. How difficult it is to deliver this kind of inward acting convincingly makes it all the more impressive.

What the film says — The sense of liminality that loss leaves behind

Personal Shopper is a ghost story on the surface, but what it speaks to inside is the void that loss leaves and the confusion of identity. Maureen doesn’t know who she is in a world without her brother. The job of personal shopper is to act as a proxy for someone else’s desires; the identity of medium is to exist between the living and the dead. In both roles, she is at a threshold. The entire film stands on this sense of liminality.

That the identity of the text messages is never clearly revealed is also intentional. What matters is not whether it is her brother or not — it is how Maureen finds a way to make peace with herself within that uncertainty.

Ratings & reception

Personal Shopper screened in competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where Olivier Assayas won the Best Director prize. But the story goes that at the Cannes screening, both booing and applause erupted simultaneously — reactions could not have been more polarized. TMDB score is 5.9, IMDb is around 6.1. Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 81%. Critics were largely positive, but the complaint “nothing ever gets resolved” was not uncommon among general audiences. It can be a frustrating film for those who need a clear ending and resolution.

What doesn’t quite work

A murder that appears in the latter portion of the film feels somewhat out of place in the film’s flow. Whether this element was inserted for a mystery narrative or to push Maureen’s psychology toward an extreme is unclear in its intention. Because the film deliberately leaves so many questions open, it can also be difficult to organize what it was trying to say after viewing — which is both a strength and a weakness depending on the viewer. The relatively low TMDB score appears to stem from this ambiguity.

Verdict

Personal Shopper is a film that clearly divides those who love it from those who don’t. If you like films that give you sensation rather than answers, films that leave an uncomfortable resonance rather than the comfort of genre — this one will stay with you for a long time. It is also a film that will make you reassess Kristen Stewart. Rating: ★4.5.

Recommended for

• People who prefer sensory resonance over clear resolution
• Those interested in Kristen Stewart’s acting
• Viewers familiar with French art cinema or looking for an entry point
• Those seeking experimental dramas dealing with identity and loss