From one star rating to Irma Vep and Summer Hours five star perfection and everything in between, Olivier Assayas’ latest will not have gone unnoticed. Sixteenth feature film with the majority of his films playing at the festival, Personal Shopper is the French filmmaker’s fifth trip in the comp and second consecutive outing with Kristen Stewart. The habitual of the Croisette has been in attendance as a critic and as a filmmaker dating all the way back to his 1983 short Laissé inachevé à Tokyo, with his comp title resume including 2000’s Les Destinées sentimentales, followed by Demonlover (2002), Clean (2004) and 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria. Not unlike some other samples in his filmography, this latest appears to have drawn strong reactions from The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy stating that Stewart “should have quit while she was ahead rather than take on such a similar role” to Eric Kohn defending the offering by claiming this is “a fully realized universe that merges visceral dread with deeper observations about its causes. Audiences unwilling to wrestle with this fascinating gamble demonstrate the worst fear plaguing moviegoing culture: Something different.”
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