'PERSONAL SHOPPER'.......THE MISTRESS OF MOPE SEES DEAD PEOPLE.....

Personal Shopper (2016)   The good news......our one and only Sweetheart Of Sulk, Kristen Stewart, perhaps realizing that everyone had tired of her one-trick-pony mopey facial expression, added something new to her very limited repertoire......

...........nervous twitching and shaking.

            In this new addition, she now reminds the BQ of the late Sandy Dennis, who pioneered a film career out of performances that collapsed into themselves, drowned in a sea of mannerisms and tics.

            Steward has tirelessly toiled through independent films.......and we'll be damned if we could remember a single memorable moment in any of her work in them.....(or the films themselves either).......the dial setting on her acting seemed permanently set on 'low'.....

           At least in this film, a monumentally pretentious attempt at sort-of-a-horror/thriller by monumentally pretentious artiste Olivier Assayas, Stewart upgrades herself to watchable.  Playing a glum personal shopper for a Kardashian-type non-entity, she finally brings some nervous energy to the role.  Playing a character who's coming undone as she traverses reality and fantasy, she demands you keep your eyes on her........and we did.

             Ooops, did we forget to mention the ghosts? Stewart pines for her late twin brother, who passed away from the heart condition she also shared with him. Being a medium and all-around ghost whisperer, Stewart spends the first third of movie wandering around her brother's huge house, seeking communication from him amidst all the creaking woodwork and suddenly open bathroom spigots.....

             Here's the irony:  Olivier Assayas, a deep thinking auteur of a director. is far too much the artiste to lower himself to all the cliched, mundane tropes of a standard horror movie......he's got way more issues on his mind in this film then to jump up in front of you and go "Booga Booga!"

            And yet......his scary/creepy scenes here generate more serious unease than all five of those "Paranormal Activity" cheeseballs put together. Go figure.

              Ultimately, though, Assayas isn't out to scare you, just confound you. After the who-goes-there ghost stuff, the film lurches into 'what-the-hell's-going-on?' thriller territory, with Stewart engaging in a never ending back-and-forth text duel with an unseen stalker who (we surmise) may or may not be the restless spirit of Stewart's brother. (With the number of cellphone closeups on display here, the film might as well have been titled "Text")

              While we admire the film's defiant determination to remain a measured reflection on the struggle to separate the real from the unreal, it finally comes off as artsy-smartsy self-indulgence by a filmmaker who thinks he's smarter than his audience. (Unlike the crowd at the Cannes Film Festival, we didn't loudly boo the film's maddening, obtuse conclusion.  We fully expected a fuzzy "huh?" for the finale......anything different would have surprised us.  Anyone who hasn't figured out that this movie shows no interest whatsoever in clarity or closure........hasn't been paying attention.)

                A head scratcher for sure....... and we applaud Stewart for making a committed effort to expand her negligible range, even if  it does turn out as nothing more than layering a lot of herky-jerky physical schtick on top of her usual trademark gloom.

                It's possible to relish the prowess of some of the individual sequences in "Personal Shopper"......but don't get your hopes up.  What you're watching here really isn't much of a movie......more of a moody painting meant to hang in a gallery and stimulate arguments.  2 semi-spooky stars (**)........the film accomplished one major reaction from us......we're almost on the verge of posting a rant on movies and TV shows obsessed with the characters' cell phone messages.....