Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)

A truly odd fish, this one, with a young American woman in Paris alternating being a personal shopper for a self-centred celebrity with trying to reach her dead twin brother in the spirit world. Kristen Stewart, who still hasn't developed more than a sullen teenage pout as an expression, should make you very wary about this as there's hardly a shot without her, but is actually for once pretty effective as a character with serious, suppressed emotional damage. However, the best aspect of the film has to be its constant unpredictability: it starts in a creepy country house reminiscent of The Others, has a brief interlude of ghostly FX and then moves to social drama about loss, dislocation and envy, before a stalker scenario also enters the mix. You never quite know what you're going to get next: while there are really too many longueurs, such as Stewart furtively trying on her employer's dresses, it's laudable to get a piece that isn't content with just being neatly bracketed. It's ultimately too cold to be affecting, but on the level of psychological horror it's not far behind its obvious influences, Polanski's Repulsion and The Tenant.

6/10