Personal Shopper (2016)
There's a moment about halfway through Personal Shopper where Kristen Stewart's character sits alone on a train, exchanging cryptic text messages with an unknown sender, and the film genuinely crackles with unease. It's tense, it's modern, it's quietly terrifying in a way that feels completely fresh. And then it's over, and you're back to watching her wander through empty Parisian apartments in near-silence, waiting for something, anything, to actually happen. That tension between what this film could be and what it actually is sums up my whole experience with it.
Olivier Assayas sets up a premise that sounds, on paper, like it should be irresistible. Maureen is a medium grieving her recently deceased twin brother, desperately trying to make contact with his spirit, all while holding down a job as a personal shopper for a high-maintenance celebrity client. The collision of the glossy, superficial world of high fashion with genuine supernatural grief is a genuinely interesting idea. Two films fighting for space in the same running time, one a moody ghost story, the other a portrait of a woman trapped in a life that isn't hers. But Assayas seems so determined to keep things slow and elliptical that neither film ever really gets room to breathe properly.
The pacing is where Personal Shopper loses me, and it loses me early. There's a difference between deliberate and meandering, and this film crosses that line more often than it should. Long stretches pass with almost no exposition, no context, and no real dramatic momentum. I can respect a director who trusts his audience, but there's a point where withholding information stops feeling like artistic restraint and starts feeling like the film simply doesn't know what it wants to say. I hit that point well before the halfway mark.
A lot is being asked of Stewart to carry those quieter stretches, and honestly, I don't think she's quite up to it here. Her detached, understated style works in certain contexts, though I'd stop well short of calling it a strength in material this demanding. The emotional weight the script requires, a woman hollowed out by loss, reaching desperately across whatever barrier separates the living from the dead, needs someone who can communicate an enormous amount while doing very little. There are moments where Stewart gets close, but too often the detachment reads as flatness rather than depth. A stronger supporting cast might have helped fill the gaps, but the film keeps Maureen so isolated that there's rarely anyone to play off. It's a lonely watch in ways that aren't always intentional.
To be fair, it's not without its merits. Assayas clearly knows how to compose a frame, and the aesthetic contrast between the cold, sterile glamour of the fashion world and the damp, shadowy unease of the supernatural sequences is genuinely well-handled. The aforementioned text message scene is a standout, a rare moment where the film's interest in digital life and modern alienation actually pays off with something genuinely suspenseful. And there are one or two earlier sequences involving a presence in an old house that manage to be properly unsettling without leaning on cheap tricks. When the film works, it works.
For a more effective slow-burn supernatural experience, I'd point you toward La Llorona, which manages to build dread with the same kind of restraint Assayas is going for here, but never lets the pace tip into tedium. It's a reminder that patience-demanding horror can absolutely pay off when the control is truly there.
Two and a half stars, and I mean that in a genuinely conflicted way. Personal Shopper isn't a bad film so much as a frustrating one. It's polished, occasionally eerie, and assembled with real craft. But it's also slow in ways that feel self-indulgent rather than purposeful, anchored by a lead performance that doesn't quite deliver what the material needs, and built on a fascinating premise it never fully commits to exploring. Worth a look if arthouse ghost stories are your thing, but go in prepared to do a lot of the work yourself. And maybe keep something nearby to check the time.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2016 | Watched: 2026-07-16
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