Personal Shopper (2016)

Olivier Assayas made Personal Shopper for Kristen Stewart, and it is the sort of gift that keeps giving in the wrong direction. She plays Maureen, an American in Paris who shops for a supermodel, mourns a twin brother with a bad heart, and receives text messages from a correspondent who may be a ghost, a prankster, or her own unraveling. There are ectoplasm stains, a floating glass, a murder, and a motorcycle. The film was booed at Cannes and then applauded for four and a half minutes, which tells us more about Cannes than about the film.

What the film does not do is instruct. It has no interest in reforming the viewer, no thesis about labor, representation, or the climate. Maureen's servitude to a wealthy model is rendered as texture, not indictment; the camera lingers on the clothes because they are beautiful and because she wants them, not because we are meant to conclude anything about capital. Her grief is supernatural and psychological, not a diagnosis. The cast is European and American and white, assembled for reasons of cinema and availability. Nobody delivers a speech.

This is a ghost story told by an adult, which has become a rare commodity. It withholds, it drifts, it ends with a thump on a wall in Oman. The score assigned to such a film on any index of contemporary social instruction is a flat zero, and the film seems content with that. Classification complete. The vintage is austere. It will not pair well with anything that wishes to teach you something.