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French director Olivier Assayas and American actor Kristen Stewart may be the most effective director/actor pairing since Martin Scorsese met Robert De Niro — and their latest collaboration, "Personal Shopper," brings out the best from both of them.
As she did in Assayas' "Clouds of Sils Maria," Stewart plays somebody on the fringes of the fame industry. Here, she plays Maureen Cartwright, an American in Paris working a thankless job: procuring high-end clothes for a celebrity, Kyra (Nora van Waldstätten), to wear at her much-photographed public appearances. Maureen is the one who has to pick up items, know what her client would like and apologize to stores when the mercurial star wants to keep items she was only going to borrow.
Maureen hangs onto the job, even though her IT-guy boyfriend, Gary (Ty Olwin), wants her to join him in Oman, because something is keeping her in Paris. Her twin brother, Lewis, died recently, and the two made a promise: That when one died, the other would wait for a signal from the other side. Maureen is a medium, with a gift for feeling otherworldly vibrations, and Lewis, supposedly, was even more attuned.
Maureen occasionally visits Lewis' old home in the hope that he will transmit a message from the afterlife. On one visit, she senses something, but fears it's not her brother but something more sinister.
Assayas, who wrote and directed, is running on several tracks here simultaneously. On one level, he's telling an old-fashioned ghost story. On another, he's exploring the notion of grief and loneliness, and Maureen's stagnation in the face of moving forward after a deep loss. On still another, he's analyzing the mechanics of celebrity, revealing how shallow it all seems next to real people's problems. And, to top it off, there's a mystery that upends everything that comes before it.
Assayas plays with form (there's a clever re-creation of a '60s-era TV movie about Victor Hugo) as he glides through the real and the surreal parts of Maureen's story. He employs chilling effects for the ghost story, but leaves enough ambiguous for the audience to reach its own conclusions.
The most effective special effect, though, is Stewart's performance. Assayas knows how to deploy her coltish beauty and uncompromising style, cutting through her tabloid persona in ways few American filmmakers have even attempted. Stewart gives back with a fierce performance, in which Maureen fights for her identity — apart from her celebrity boss and her dead twin — and her freedom from grief and guilt.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'Personal Shopper'
Star Kristen Stewart and French director Olivier Assayas join forces for a thoughtful and surprising tale of grief and ghosts.
Where • Broadway Centre Cinemas.
When • Opens Friday, March 31.
Rating • R for some language, sexuality, nudity and a bloody violent image.
Running time • 104 minutes; in English and in French with subtitles.