Very sexy and very scary, Personal Shopper is Oliver Assayas' follow-up to Clouds of Sils Maria, the film that proved a sharp and sensitive director could find a virtue in Kristen Stewart's air of neutrality. Assayas makes a display of this actress's humid eyes, firmly set mouth and smooth physique, but the ghost story isn't all about her vulnerability -- it follows a few sidebars about the parapsychological activities of Victor Hugo, for instance, to get us ready for the point when Assayas starts playing the xylophone on the viewer's spinal cord.Maureen Cartwright (Stewart) is a personal shopper for a very mean and extremely wealthy Parisienne. She carries on a frayed relationship via Skype with her boyfriend, who is working a long-term assignment in Muscat, Oman.Maureen has an avocation--she's a medium and spends a night searching for ghosts in an empty house. It's the house where her twin brother, Lewis, died; her heart, like his, may be a time bomb ready to stop without warning. He'd always promised to send a message back to the world of the living. The film doesn't cheat: a ghost of swirling, smokelike ectoplasm reveals itself to Maureen early in the film. Later, she gets texts from some mysterious, omniscient being. It knows her every move, telling Maureen, "I want you, and I will have you."There are three sound people credited here, and you'll see why. The soundscape goes beyond the eclectic mix of the score, including Marlene Dietrich's "Das Hobbellied," a song superficially about carpentry, but really about death as the great leveler of the world's classes.As in David Lynch, the disturbing sound is more chilling than the disturbing image. The thump of a ghost answering questions has a wetness and echo to it, like the sound of rolling thunder diminishing. The dull, irritating buzz of a cellphone carrying threatening anonymous messages--perhaps from the hereafter--gives brand new punch to the old "the calls are coming from inside the house!" gimmick.Personal Shopper SynopsisA high-fashion personal shopper to the stars is also a spiritual medium. Grieving the recent death of her twin brother, she haunts his Paris home, determined to make contact with him.Drama Suspense/ThrillerRelease Date: March 10, 2017Casts: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Anders Danielsen Lie, Hammou Graia, Nora Von Waldsetten, Benjamin Biolay, Pamela Betsy Cooper, Olivier Assayas, Olivier Assayas, Marion Monnier, Yorick Le Saux, Charles Gillibert, Christelle Meaux, Fabian Gasmia, Antoinette Boulat, Sigrid Bouaziz, Ty Olwin, Audrey Bonnet, Pascal Rambert, Aurlia Petit, Dan Belhassen,David Bowles, Leo Haidar, Yun Lai, Abigail Millar, Benoit Peverelli, Khaled Rawahi, Fabrice Reeves, Francois Renaud Labarthe, Jurgen Doering, Artemio Benki, Carole Bethuel, Stphane Germain, Nicolas Sand, Laurie Kotfila, Anthony Lestremau, Jeremy Maillard, Nicolas Cantin, Fred Mays, Nicolas Fioraso, Louis Naudin, Morgane Thomas, Olivier Goinard, Nicolas Moreau, Klara Holubova, Edouard Blaise, Avril Carpentier, Morgane Bernhard, Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen, Martin Kurel, Sanabel Cherqaoui
