Video on Demand — June 2017
Video pick of the month
Personal Shopper
Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas’s latest feature, begins with a classic horror movie trope: an evening spent in a haunted house. Kristen Stewart plays expat Maureen — not a paranormalist or twentysomething thrill-seeker but a personal clothes buyer and stylist to Kyra, a celebrity socialite and member of the Davos set. Something of a savant, Maureen does this job with an instinctual certainty but little evident pleasure. Whether that’s due to her preternatural cool or an overlay of mourning is unclear. But several months earlier, her brother, with whom she shares a congenital heart condition, died in a drafty mansion somewhere in the French countryside, and Maureen will now spend an evening in the house, waiting for a communique he promised he’d send her from beyond the grave.
That communique arrives, but, significantly, it’s seen by only us, the audience, and not Maureen — and we can’t even be sure whether it’s a manifestation of her brother or some more sinister presence. Indeed, the ever-so-subtle digital poltergeist floats just outside of Maureen’s POV, signaling that while Maureen’s synapses may still be fogged by grief, Personal Shopper, the film, is no skeptic; it’s a work that believes. (Scott Macaulay)
