When Kristen Stewart last collaborated with director Olivier Assayas as a headliner in Clouds of Sils Maria, she won a coveted César for her performance. She is also being lauded for her performance in Assayas’s most recent production, Personal Shopper, though the film itself has elicited some nasty reactions. In fact, as the credits rolled at its Cannes Film Festival premiere, the audience actually booed.
As Variety’s Chief International Film Critic Peter Debruge writes, the film chronicles the spiritual crisis of an American personal shopper living in Paris. Said titular shopper, played by Stewart, possesses the ability to communicate with ghosts.
This sounds pretty cool! And yet, Variety reports that Personal Shopper “was booed following [its] press screening” at Cannes.
That said, reviews have not been so uniformly negative — and critics are heaping praise upon Stewart.
Others, disinclined to trust the Cannes audience, take the negative reaction as a promise of excellence.
It remains to be seen how the larger festival audience will respond, but we’ll know soon enough. Personal Shopper will “officially [screen] Tuesday at 11 a.m. Cannes time.” Meanwhile, Stewart looms large at Cannes this year; she also stars in “Woody Allen’s Café Society, which received primarily positive reviews.” But—somehow—the latter doesn’t compel me as much.
Top Image via IFC Films. Embedded Images via Twitter.
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