In the opening act of Olivier Assayas' enigmatic thriller Personal Shopper, our protagonist Maureen speaks of waiting to be able to continue with her life; she currently occupies a sort of purgatory, waiting for some nebulous sign from her deceased brother, she is neither here nor there. Played with typically fidgety intrigue by Kristen Stewart, Maureen is convincing as a women caught in this in between state. When we learn that she is a medium, it seems appropriate; her dark sunken eyes suggest an otherworldly detachment, as if she could slip into another realm at any moment.
Indeed, Personal Shopper is a film that operates on a lower supernatural stratum. Assayas cultivates a dissonance between what initially seems a realist surface and the inexplicable forces that bubble beneath, at times, almost straying into the world of Lynch. Although, the film is in theory a ghost story, it does not often deliver on what is typically expected from the genre, instead toying with our expectations. This is perhaps best exemplified by the scenes where Maureen explores her and her brother Lewis' old, distinctly creepy house. As we follow her around, the jump scares that the setting dictates never come; in their place we get a boldly drawn-out exercise in atmosphere, lingering on every deft movement of Stewart.
Maureen - who works as a personal shopper - is in many ways the archetypal Kristen Stewart character, at times almost parodying herself with her seemingly irrepressible penchant for sullenness. However, as she broods and sulks her way about the screen, hidden beneath dull clothing, every halting subtlety of expression is imbued with captivating ambiguity. Her performance is delicately interspersed with the nervous ticks of a woman unsure of her place in the world, painting a convincing picture of her unease. When she says she would like to be another person in a text, it seems plausible.
In fact, much of the success of the film's narrative centres on this ambiguity. A large portion of the film is punctuated by a text conversation with an unknown stalker that, as it progresses, seems to influence her behaviour. Assayas maintains the enigma of the identity of the one sending the texts throughout, leaving us to toy with the possibilities. Is it just a run-of-the-mill stalker tracking her movements in some way? A reflection of her unspoken fears and desires, hinting at some mental instability? Or perhaps a manifestation of her deceased brother Lewis?
Regardless, there is something unnerving about the omnipresent buzzing of the phone. Indeed, Maureen's near constant attachment to it seems an appropriate modern day update of the horror trope of possession; the phone becomes an expression of her inner turmoil, appearing at times to control her. This culminates in a bizarrely disquieting scene that shows Maureen being persuaded to try on the couture bought for her employer by a series of text messages. Whilst the incongruous Das Hobellied plays in the background, giving the scene an odd sense of importance; she saunters around the house with an assured poise that we haven't seen until now, making us question what has provoked this change.
Assayas maintains this feeling of unrest throughout, finishing with a coda that is as cryptically inconclusive as you would expect from this film as he elects not to resolve the mystery found at the centre of the plot. This ending is typical of a film that is almost contrary in its refusal to make any explicit implication to the audience. Instead, Personal Shopper is a film determined to occupy the uncanny spaces at the corners of our thoughts, sculpting doubt and uncertainty to create something thrillingly macabre.
