A mopey Kristen Stewart shops 'til her heart stops in Personal Shopper

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      Starring Kristen Stewart. In English and French, with English subtitles. Rated 14A

      Kristen Stewart, who always has a somewhat haunted look, ain’t afraid of no ghost. At least, that’s what she thinks when she goes looking for trouble in Personal Shopper, the latest from French writer-director Olivier Assayas, who prides himself on tonal variety, jumping from stylish vampire romps (Irma Vep) to Truffaut-like family tales (Summer Hours).

      Shopper has a bit of everything, in that it takes current concerns seriously—are we in thrall to the spectre of our cellphones?—but dabbles in genre conventions for the sake of sheer entertainment. In the filmmaker’s last effort, Clouds of Sils Maria, Stewart played the grumpy assistant to Juliette Binoche’s waning movie star. Here, she’s the blandly named Maureen Cartwright, cranky clothes carrier and errand girl for a Kardashian-like model-celebrity (Nora von Waldstätten, also from Sils Maria) based in a rain-dappled Paris.

      Some people have noticed that the couture she borrows for her boss looks better on Maureen. But her real thing, aside from smoking and moping, is trying to get in touch with her twin brother. He recently died, you see, from a rare heart condition she shares. And they made a pact, perhaps unique in all of human history, that the first to go would attempt to contact the other.

      This means staying in the big, spooky house where he used to live (in Prague, although the new location goes unnamed). Apparitions do appear, but what are they? Other spirits follow her on train trips to London and elsewhere, and there’s even a weirdly self-contained murder mystery, in case looking at Cartier jewellery and sexy S&M wear isn’t enough—even with Marlene Dietrich and medieval music in the background. Assayas is saying something about overly conspicuous consumption, but what is it?

      With her searching eyes and sharply triangular face (like an Emma Watson with problems), Stewart is a strangely compelling stand-in for our millennial anxieties. But her pitchless speech is even more monotonous than usual, and there’s something numbingly interchangeable about all the people and events in the director’s coldly sumptuous world.

      Ghosts might be out to get us, but it’s not really personal.

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