Personal Shopper

A story that is very open to interpretation, featuring ghosts... maybe.

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Here's what I've been watching and playing over the last seven days...

MOVIES

Personal Shopper

Movie summary: A personal shopper in Paris refuses to leave the city until she makes contact with her twin brother who previously died there. Her life becomes more complicated when a mysterious person contacts her via text message. (IMDb)

There's keeping things vague in a narrative to allow the audience to draw their own conclusions regarding what a story is about, and then there's Personal Shopper.

Honestly, if you have any clear idea what this movie is about by the time it's over, I can only assume there's a story thread you latched onto early, decided that was what the movie was about and then viewed everything through that lens.

I do also need to get a bit spoilery about things, as Personal Shopper is quite often described as a horror film and, while there are ghosts, their presence serves another purpose rather than to scare, much like Crimson Peak, which was misunderstood by many on release.

This is more of a psychological thriller following Kristen Stewart's Maureen as she tries to negotiate her way through a turbulent period in her life doing a job she hates while trying to get closure for her brother's death.

Stewart is perfectly fine in the role, which helps with how central her character is to everything, but the rest of the movie doesn't really match her level of performance.

It's a very lonely film, with Maureen having acquaintances and meeting others to talk to, but almost 'floats' through the story herself made it difficult for me to connect to a character that, similar to the movie as a whole, doesn't know what her purpose is.

Personal Shopper almost feels like the middle part of a trilogy, with the event that kicks off the protagonist's story (the death of Maureen's brother) happening before the film starts and no real conclusion at the end making it feel like there should be extra things to watch to form a fully cohesive narrative.

I feel that if either one of the story or the character of Maureen had been a little stronger and more purposeful then I would've enjoyed the movie more but there's just not enough meat on the bone to be truly satisfying for me.

This isn't a badly-made film by any means, it just feels like the story idea was never fleshed out properly and what we see is the best that could be done with what they had.

Personal Shopper is too ethereal to really get into beyond admiring Kristen Stewart's performance, although it could be interesting to watch as a group and see how many different takes you get. [5/10]

GAMES

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I'm really, really enjoying the combat in this game, along with the characters, but the story still isn't connecting with me yet, but there's still a long way to go.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I'm finally up to the mission that apparently really kicks off the game and is supposedly where it gets good, but it remains inexcusable it took so long to get here - now to see if this moment lives up to the hype.

Also currently playing: Batman: Arkham City, Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020), Poker Night at the Inventory

TV

Under the Banner of Heaven

There not being a review of this limited series this week is my fault for not noticing how long each of the episodes were.

I just assumed that they would be roughly 45-minutes each, so the six episodes would total around 4.5 hours - it actually turns out that each one is just over an hour long and there was more than six hours of story to get through.

As a result of not setting aside enough time, I've got the last two episodes to go and will be writing about this series next week - and I'm liking it quite a bit up to this point.

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