Personal Shopper

PERSONAL SHOPPER (Olivier Assayas, 2016)

Maureen (Kristen Stewart) makes a living selecting clothes and accessories for her wealthy celebrity client Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten) in PERSONAL SHOPPER, but she draws little fulfillment from the work. She’s surrounded by all this luxury but cannot partake of it. Additionally, she still mourns the death of her twin brother Lewis with whom she shares a heart abnormality. The brother and sister also claim to have the gift of being mediums. They made a pact that whoever died first would contact the other sibling from the beyond.

Maureen stays at Lewis’s house waiting for a sign from him but receives nothing that she interprets as definitive proof. One night she has contact with a ghost, but who it is and what it wants is hard for her to determine. She then begins receiving texts from an unknown entity, possibly Lewis but perhaps another spirit or someone living. As Maureen communicates with whoever is on the other end, she becomes more distressed about the life she has put on hold to resolve whether her brother can still talk to her.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas often uses PERSONAL SHOPPER’s widescreen frame to capture Maureen alone in large spaces, conveying the character’s freedom of movement and absence of direct contact. This is a visual reflection of the modern experience, the virtual ability to go anywhere yet remain disconnected from anyone. Maureen could be interacting with the dead, the living, or her own thoughts feeding delusions brought on by grief and isolation. She travels from Paris to London and back trapped within what’s going on in her head and the sometimes hostile text conversation with her unknown correspondent. This tense and lengthy passage in which most of the action is sending and awaiting SMS responses strongly depicts the experience of falling down an electronic rabbit hole of online activity to the elimination of anything outside the bubble.

Stewart’s remarkable performance is fueled by her detachment. It’s as though she’s there and not there, which aligns with Maureen being physically present and mentally afar. When she acts impulsively, such as secretly trying on Kyra’s clothes when she is expressly forbidden from doing so, it’s as though an invisible woman has materialized all of a sudden. The character is someone who makes an effort not to be seen, so to reveal herself is as shocking as anything. Stewart also says a lot about Maureen in the small movements of her thumbs as she texts, letting a quiver of them express more than a monologue.

Among the various topics Assayas touches upon, grief is the most potent and pertinent. Maureen has been badly rattled by her brother’s death, and it informs her very being from moment to moment. Whether one believes in her gift or not, what matters is that she does. Her ability to commune with the dead worsens her emotional struggle. Just like the expensive things she handles for others but does not possess, she has access to the spiritual plane but the frustration of unclear messages being received. Although her dilemma occurs within a ghost story, Maureen’s situation is not much different than a religious believer searching for the voice of God but unable to decipher what is thought to be heard.

Grade: A-

Certain Women

CERTAIN WOMEN (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

Although the vignettes in CERTAIN WOMEN are fleetingly connected on a narrative level, they are strongly unified in telling the stories of small town Montana characters who want to be seen, or seen in a particular way. Their personal and professional invisibility does not extend from a lack of trying. In fact, it’s because their efforts go unacknowledged or are rebuffed that their exasperation grows. In each story writer-director Kelly Reichardt provides the space to observe these women closely and empathize with what they are thinking and feeling regardless of if they express such things in a demonstrative way.

CERTAIN WOMEN is comprised of three stories, each about a woman with thwarted desires. In the first segment Laura Wells (Laura Dern) is a lawyer with an insistent client who refuses to accept that he has no further recourse in an injury claim against his employer. Fuller (Jared Harris) has been doggedly pursuing more compensation to no avail for eight months. He also can be volatile, leaving Laura struggling to get through to a man who doesn’t want to listen. In the second part Gina Lewis (Michelle Williams) is building a new home with her husband Ryan (James Le Gros) and wants to purchase the native sandstone that Albert (Rene Auberjonois), an old man they know, has piled up on his property. Gina gets frustrated that Albert doesn’t appear to be interested in talking to her and that Ryan undermines her in the conversation. The third story focuses on a rancher (Lily Gladstone) who randomly wanders into an adult education course on school law taught by Beth Travis (Kristen Stewart). The rancher has no interest in the subject but is curious in getting to know Beth, who makes a four-hour drive each way twice a week to lead the class.

Laura wants her professional expertise to be respected and heard. Gina wishes not to be thought of like a boss by her husband and daughter and needs Albert to recognize her presence. The rancher is lonely and wants Beth to understand the affection she feels. CERTAIN WOMEN benefits from being, top to bottom, surely one of the best acted films of the year. Notice the internal conflict in Dern as she reluctantly gives a ride to Fuller and wrestles with when and how to tell him off as he voices his anger about the situation he’s in. You can see her doing the calculations of how to deal with a client who values a man’s opinion much more. Williams’ excellence comes in having a full awareness of what is happening around Gina and adapting to what she thinks others want while not showing her cards. With Stewart and Gladstone there’s the tension between someone not self-conscious and one who is hyper-aware of her feelings and tamps them down so as not to be embarrassed. So much of CERTAIN WOMEN is transmitted by watching these actresses think and interact with their environments.

Beyond the broader concerns of the characters, Reichardt is interested in capturing the small details, gestures that speak to the humanity and quirks of the individuals. At a diner Beth wipes her mouth with the napkin still wrapped around the silverware. Laura leaves half of her blouse untucked after a rush to return to work after a midday affair. The dumb, self-involved questions in the night classes provide funny punctuation to the the end of those scenes. Reichardt is so good at building the characters through these subtle movements and silence that whole existences seem to be realized in just slices of life.

Grade: A

Clouds of Sils Maria

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Olivier Assayas, 2014)

In CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA middle-aged actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is en route to accept an award in Switzerland on behalf of the reclusive playwright and filmmaker who provided her big break at the age of 18 when news comes of his death. The occasion provides cause for reflection on her life’s work and faded youth, especially when a director (Lars Eidinger) wants Maria to commit to his restaging of the career-making play but in the older woman’s role. Opposite her in the part she made her name on will be 19-year-old tabloid regular and Hollywood ingenue Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz).

In the play within the film Maria broke through as an intern who seduces, uses, and dumps the 40-year-old married businesswoman who falls for her. Now she’s being asked to switch positions to the part that more closely reflects her age yet still identifies with the younger character. Writer-director Olivier Assayas layers CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA so that the script being rehearsed and parts being played within it explore the similarities between the characters doing the reading and the roles they are taking on. When Maria and Valentine are deep in a scene, they could just as well be discussing the dynamic between them. Assayas also introduces a meta level in which comments about the industry, image-making, and gossip could just as well apply to the lives of Binoche, Moretz, and especially Stewart. This blurring of the lines isn’t a cute postmodern trick but a profound means for looking at aging, power, and celebrity.

Binoche is predictably great. As Maria she makes clear how to strive to stay viable in a business that probably gives her a shelf life of twenty years tops before brushing many like her aside. Binoche handles the dialogue-driven portions with incomparable artistry, but the greatest pleasures are often found in seeing her react. Whether it’s the unforced nature of her laugh or fiddling with 3D glasses at a banal blockbuster, she lives in the character’s skin. Stewart matches Binoche’s intensity and technical skill with an affectless performance that her highest profile role in the TWILIGHT films never tapped. She hides her character’s ambition in her attentiveness to Maria, almost like a child to an elderly parent, yet Valentine is willing to push back when she feels unheard or unappreciated. CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA offers complex gratification as the story snakes along and enjoyment as a superior acting showcase.

Grade: A

The Runaways

THE RUNAWAYS (Floria Sigismondi, 2010)

The rise and fall of an all-girl rock band in the mid-'70s gets the big screen treatment in THE RUNAWAYS. Band members range in age from thirteen to sixteen and include Kristin Stewart as guitarist Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as lead singer Cherie Currie.

At the time the idea of hard rocking girls was not taken seriously, but the group's manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) finds the key to success in emphasizing their jailbait appeal, especially with Cherie. The Runaways get a record deal with Mercury and go on a tour of Japan, but personally and professionally, the girls aren't prepared for the temptations before them.

THE RUNAWAYS doesn't take the traditional biopic route. Rather than checking off all the important events on the band's timeline, the film gets caught up in the rush of youth, rebellion, and rock and roll. It pulses on the energy of surging hormones and living in the moment. That raw, uninhibited feel serves the music and the characters well, but after the buzz wears off, it's easy to see how lacking it all was for those living like this and is for those of us watching a recreation that's about as deep and insightful as a photo shoot.

Fanning brings vulnerability to her role as an underage sex kitten. Stewart carries her character with low key integrity. Both struggle, though, to round out their parts beyond assuming rock star poses. To the contrary, Shannon gustily takes to playing the sleazeball manager. It's a weird, funny, and scary performance that embodies the worst beliefs about people in the entertainment industry.

The Runaways may have gone along with Fowley's design of the band, but undoubtedly they were exploited in the process. It may have been nearly impossible to avoid doing the same in telling their story. Still, it's no accident that THE RUNAWAYS teases and delivers the possibility of young starlets gone wild. The film might be intended as a cautionary tale, but that tends to get lost amid the lurid thrills and tacked-on happy ending.

Grade: C-