Personal Shopper (2016)
Olivier Assayas has spent the better part of four decades building a reputation as one of French cinema's more restless and formally curious directors. Coming off the two-part miniseries Carlos (2010) and the well-received Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), in which he first worked with Kristen Stewart, Assayas arrived at Personal Shopper at something of a career high point. The film premiered in competition at Cannes 2016, where it won him the Best Director prize, though not without a fair amount of booing from sections of the audience, which, depending on your perspective, is either a badge of honour or a warning sign. The production is a Franco-German-Czech co-venture, pulling together CG Cinéma and ARTE France Cinéma among others, and was shot largely on location in Paris, London, and Oman. Assayas wrote the screenplay himself, so there is no source novel to blame or credit. The budget was modest by any mainstream measure, which suits the material: this is a film that trades in atmosphere and ambiguity rather than spectacle.
At the centre of it all is Kristen Stewart as Maureen, an American in Paris scraping a living as a personal shopper for a high-profile celebrity, buying clothes and jewellery she could never afford herself. The job is a kind of purgatory, and Maureen is not really there for the work. She is waiting, in the most literal sense, for a sign from her recently deceased twin brother, a fellow medium who made a pact with her that whoever died first would somehow make contact from the other side. Stewart has spent much of her post-Twilight career (fans of that franchise may recall our look at The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2) actively seeking out directors like Assayas and Ang Lee, films that sit at the more demanding, less commercially obvious end of the spectrum. Lars Eidinger, a major name on the German-language stage, appears as Maureen's employer's partner, bringing a coiled, slightly menacing energy to his limited screen time. Sigrid Bouaziz and Anders Danielsen Lie round out the principal cast in roles that are more functional than showy. The ensemble is small and the film keeps its focus tightly on Stewart throughout, which is either a strength or a liability, depending on how you respond to her particular screen presence.
There is a broader conversation worth having about where Personal Shopper sits in the tradition of European arthouse ghost stories, films that use the supernatural less as a genre mechanism and more as a way of externalising grief, isolation, and the particular modern condition of being permanently connected but somehow unreachable. It shares something of a DNA with quieter, more interior horror films such as La Llorona, where dread accumulates through suggestion rather than incident. The fashion world setting adds a layer of hollow glamour that Assayas uses as a counterpoint to Maureen's raw, unresolved mourning, all polished surfaces concealing a good deal of emptiness underneath.
Olivier Assayas’s 2016 supernatural thriller Personal Shopper is a painfully slow burn that demands a level of patience I simply didn't have. The film throws you straight into the deep end with almost zero exposition.
We are introduced to Maureen (Kristen Stewart), who is apparently a medium trying to connect with her deceased twin brother while simultaneously working as a personal shopper for a demanding, globe-trotting celebrity. It’s a fascinating premise on paper, but the execution leaves you floundering in the shallow end for far too long before you ever get to the actual bones of the story.
The pacing is a major stumbling block. The film meanders through endless, quiet moments of Maureen waiting for a sign, checking her phone, or wandering through empty Parisian apartments. While I can appreciate the deliberate, atmospheric tension Assayas is trying to build, it often just feels like a chore to sit through. A movie this reliant on its central performance needs an anchor, and frankly, Kristen Stewart is not the strongest actress out there for this specific type of material. Her somewhat wooden, detached delivery doesn't quite carry the emotional weight the script demands, and the film desperately needed a stronger, more dynamic ensemble cast to bounce off of and elevate the proceedings.
That being said, it’s not a complete disaster. The technical craft is undeniably slick. Assayas knows how to frame a shot, and the sleek, sterile aesthetic of the high-fashion world contrasts nicely with the eerie, lingering dread of the supernatural elements. There are a couple of genuinely unnerving sequences (particularly a brilliantly tense, single-take scene involving a smartphone) that prove the director still has a firm grasp on building modern, digital-age horror.
Personal Shopper is a film of missed potential. It’s not a bad watch if you’re in the mood for a moody, atmospheric ghost story and don't mind a sluggish pace, but it’s certainly not a particularly good one either. It’s a visually polished curiosity that will likely only satisfy the most devoted fans of arthouse cinema, leaving the rest of us checking our watches.
Personal Shopper is the kind of film that tends to cleave opinion rather than settle it, and the mixed reception it received at Cannes tells you something about the gamble Assayas was taking. For those drawn to slow, mood-heavy European cinema with an unconventional structure, it offers enough of interest to warrant a single viewing. For everyone else, the distance between the film's ambitions and its effects may feel too wide to bridge comfortably. Arthouse grief drama crossed with digital-age thriller is an interesting idea on paper, and it would not be the first time a fascinating premise has produced a frustrating film. Sometimes the ghost in the machine is just the machine.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2016 | Watched: 2026-07-16
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Personal Shopper (2016) on YouTube
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