I grieve, therefore I am: if there is a single characteristic that grounds the personal identity of Kristen Stewart’s dissociative expat Maureen, it’s the yearning she feels to reconnect with her recently deceased twin brother. It’s the mark not only of her existence, but also an emotional subjectivity in opposition to the imperceptible forces that compress the outside world she exists within into a maze of subways, malls, hotels, and boutiques without any individuated character of their own.
Director Olivier Assayas uses these distinctly contemporary and globalized spaces in service of a techno-ghost story: a story that hovers between the naturalist/dualist divide without ever passing through that most obstructive border, the restrictive expectations of narrative clarity. Personal Shopper denies these two poles as a dichotomy, essentially rendering the film’s closing question—“is it you, or is it just me?”—as irrelevant.
Maureen, cursed to a life of grief that ultimately defines her, otherwise is as vacuous and translucent as the material world that would have her be just another object without an identity or a consciousness. — Josh Cabrita, MUBI Notebook / Cinema Scope
Arts & Faith Lists:
2017 Arts & Faith Ecumenical Jury — #4