I really enjoyed The Clouds of Sils Maria so I have been looking forward to Personal Shopper, the latest collaboration between Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart. I saw it last night and my mind was blown. Maureen (Stewart) has moved to Paris to visit the house where her twin brother died of the same congenital heart condition that she has. The two of them made a vow that whoever died first would return to give the other a sign that there is an afterlife. As she waits for this sign, she works as a personal shopper for a celebrity, borrowing couture clothing and designer jewelry for her client to be photographed in. Maureen is haunted by a spirit in her brother's house (in some of the scariest scenes I've ever seen) and is harassed by an unknown stalker who sends her menacing texts. The film begins as a typical ghost story, then becomes a murder mystery, and ends as a psychological study of a young woman in an existential crisis. It is a brilliant juxtaposition of the spiritual and the material. It is incredibly suspenseful and part of that is due to the fact that I never knew what would happen from one moment to the next. The atmospheric score only added to my unease. Stewart gives the best performance of her career, in my opinion, and she is simply riveting. It is definitely the best performance I've seen this year. The scenes on the Eurostar where she receives a string of texts are intense, to say the least, and the final scene raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I know that this film won't appeal to many moviegoers, especially those who don't like ambiguous endings, but I found it to be fascinating and I'm sure that I will be thinking about for many days to come.
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