Kristen Stewart uses physical tics as pointedly as lines of dialogue. Her artificial, artfully rendered oddness reveals something naturalism could not.
Special Issue on Personal Shopper
To celebrate the release of Olivier Assayas' Personal Shopper, his second collaboration with actress Kristen Stewart for which he picked up the Best Director prize at Cannes, we are dedicating a full week to essays on the film and its ties to Assayas' previous work. Here you'll find all of our articles on the film.
Alex Heeney interviews Olivier Assayas
Alex Heeney on depression and technology in Personal Shopper
Joseph Earp on Kristen Stewart and the myth of 'bad acting'
Mike Thorn on dread, eroticism, and text messages in Personal Shopper
Aaron Hammond on grief and ghosts in Summer Hours and Personal Shopper
Personal Shopper conflates depression with technological obsession
In Personal Shopper, the boundary between Maureen and others is both because of technology and merely exacerbated by it.
Ghosts, grief, and objects left behind in Assayas’ Summer Hours and Personal Shopper
Olivier Assayas’ films Summer Hours and Personal Shopper are united by their portrayal of the recently bereaved confronting what the dead did, or did not, leave behind.
‘No desire if it’s not forbidden’: Dread, eroticism, and text messaging in Personal Shopper
By using text messaging as a source of terror that morphs into eroticism, Personal Shopper acknowledges and subverts horror traditions.
Olivier Assayas on Personal Shopper, filming text messages
Olivier Assayas discusses the visual and aural aesthetic of Personal Shopper and how he shot that impressive texting set piece. This is an excerpt of the interview which appears in our case study on Personal Shopper in the ebook Beyond Empowertainment: Feminist Horror and The Struggle for Female Agency, which is available for purchase here.