Beguiling, Mysterious and Unknowable (plus the V mag pics)

Personal Shopper currently has a Certified Fresh rating of 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics consensus saying this film was, "....bolstered by a performance from Kristen Stewart that's impossible to ignore." What I found to be even more impressive is the fact that 89% of the top critics liked it. You already quoted from Peter Travers, so here's several more excerpts from other top critics working in the industry, some of whom have given Kristen rave reviews for her stellar performance:


"With this moody ghost story, Kristen Stewart continues to prove she’s a world-class actress who enthralls us by holding back.

What makes Kristen Stewart so arresting an actress is also what makes it so hard to describe what she does on screen. There’s something beguilingly mysterious about her that you can’t quite quantify. She’s there, but she’s also not there. It’s not that she’s bored or out of it, but rather that she seems to be operating on a strange frequency all her own. We watch Stewart in part because we can’t quite understand her.

That air of ambiguity is crucial to the strong spell that Personal Shopper weaves. I’ve seen this moody character study twice now, and I can’t say I’m any closer to unraveling its meanings or determining precisely why Stewart is so terrific in it. All I know is I want to watch it—and her—again very soon.

This is Stewart’s great gift. In the five years since the end of the Twilight franchise, which exponentially raised her profile but also damaged her credibility among serious filmgoers, she has delivered a slew of terrific performances that have maximized her enigmatic quality. " ~Tim Grierson
https://newrepublic.com/article/141231/personal-shopper-shes-not


"Who could have possibly predicted that not only would Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart combine to form one of the most potent creative duos working in film today, but that they would achieve such prominence over the course of only two movies?

They have now reunited for “Personal Shopper,” and despite the high-water mark set by their previous collaboration, they have managed to out-do themselves with a work as mysterious, moving and haunting as anything that has materialized in a movie theater in a while.

Aiding immeasurably in accomplishing this is Stewart delivering what could be the finest performance of her still-developing career. Throughout the film, she is required to display any number of internal shifts in personality while still remaining more or less the same on the outside. To each shift in character, she manages to find an approach that does something wholly new and original while at the same time being absolutely real and recognizable. She saves the best for the very last with a delivery of the film’s final line that is extraordinarily evocative. To all those who still decree Stewart to be a limited actress because of her increasingly glum turns in the “Twilight” films, where she was dealing with writing and characters seemingly designed to defeat anyone with talent or intelligence, they are hereby advised to see her work here and either admit to her enormous talents or admit to the fact that they have absolutely no idea of what constitutes great acting." ~Peter Sobczynski
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/personal-shopper-2017


"You can imagine Assayas gazing at Stewart in their last project and thinking, I would love to make a movie that dislocates her in every way imaginable and then see how she fills the void.

Tantalizingly, as it turns out." ~David Edelstein
http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/movie-review-personal-shopper.html?mid=full-rss-vulture


"The ghosts are occasionally visible and audible here, but they’re just as likely to be ethereal, and that fits in with Assayas’s storytelling, which often forces us to fill in gaps of unspoken dialogue or unexplained plot for ourselves. It’s a strategy that pays off, however, since it allows the talented Stewart to communicate so much with her expressive eyes and face.

(The shelf life on “Twilight” jokes, incidentally, has long expired: both Stewart and Robert Pattinson are out there giving interesting performances for some of this generation’s most important filmmakers.)" ~Alonso Duralde
http://www.thewrap.com/personal-shopper-review-kristen-stewart-olivier-assayas/


*There's a limit on how many words can be used in a post, so I'll continue with the reviews in my next replies.

Continued

"Review: Kristen Stewart, otherworldly in 'Personal Shopper'

Thank goodness for Stewart, who deftly guides the audience along on this jumbled journey. The always evolving actress is singular in excelling at occupying this ordinary space despite her extraordinary fame off screen. That she's already played an assistant-type for Assayas takes away a bit of the fun of seeing her as a normal bumping up against the equally unreal world of celebrity, but in "Personal Shopper" she gets to go a little more wild." ~Lindsey Bahr
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/review-kristen-stewart-otherworldly-personal-shopper

"Ms. Stewart's portrayal has the ring of truth and the urgency of terror." ~Joe Morgenstern
https://www.wsj.com/articles/personal-shopper-review-reaching-across-the-void-1489080994

"Kristen Stewart intrigues again in ‘Personal Shopper’

French filmmaker Olivier Assayas has entered into a fruitful collaboration with Kristen Stewart, showcasing the former “Twilight” star in entirely new and refreshing ways. Stewart’s talent has never been in question — she commanded attention as a child in “Panic Room,” and in indies like “Into the Wild” and “Adventureland,” while also cavorting with sparkly vampires in the blockbuster young adult franchise. It seems almost a “Twilight” rebellion for Stewart to retreat into indie and foreign films, but it’s a richly welcomed one.

But far more than that, “Personal Shopper” is a testament to Stewart who, in her magnetically naturalistic performance, not only proves her versatility, but cements a signature style inextricably linked to persona." ~Katie Walsh
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/life/kristen-stewart-intrigues-again-in-personal-shopper/article_4c3282c7-e52f-5ba6-b6be-65714060d446.html

"Stewart, who appears in nearly every scene, is intensely watchable, a coiled spring." ~Leah GreenBlatt
http://ew.com/movies/2017/03/09/personal-shopper-ew-review/

"Review: Kristen Stewart Sets Personal Shopper Ablaze

Stewart is both laid back and ablaze here. Her eyes can be as alert as a tiger’s, but more often they seem to assay the world with the cool, lazy blink of a lizard. She moves with the grace of a boy who both plays baseball and takes ballet. At one point, in an act of sultry defiance, Maureen secretly tries on one of her boss’s costly dresses, trussing her tomboy-flapper figure in a faux-bondagey harness that’s later draped with a floating layer of black chiffon. Soft and strong, she’s garçon and femme, boy and woman, at once. You wouldn’t call her gamine—that’s too cute, too in-between, and Stewart is definitive. She knows exactly who she is: Her allure is that she keeps us guessing." ~Stephanie Zacherek
http://time.com/4696431/kristen-stewart-personal-shopper-review/

Continued


"Review Is Olivier Assayas' spooky, entrancing 'Personal Shopper' Kristen Stewart's finest performance?

It is also, first and foremost, a testament to the eerie powers of Kristen Stewart, a movie star who has now twice pulled off the trick of chipping away at her celebrity and redefining the boundaries of her talent in the same instance.

'Personal Shopper' is a gripping portrait of solitude, which is to say it’s a hell of a one-woman show for Stewart, the rare actress who can blur into the background and magnetize the camera in the same scene. Rarely has the sight of someone quietly, urgently going about her business seemed so riveting. Stewart’s style is so unaffected that it takes a while to realize that Maureen is registering the effects of a profound, soul-shaking trauma, one that threatens to destabilize her very understanding of who she is.

Her character may not know who she is or where she’s headed, but on the evidence of her finest screen performance to date, Kristen Stewart knows exactly what she’s doing." ~Justin Chang
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-personal-shopper-review-20170309-story.html


"This is a bigger issue for the supporting cast than for Stewart, who got one of her finest showcases in Clouds (also playing a celebrity’s personal assistant) and has a way of infecting scripted action with naturalism.

Stewart makes the scenes of her character’s day-to-day life seem unrehearsed and intimate, as though the movie were peering in on someone whose thoughts were always someplace else. A lot of it is the magic of casual gesture—things she does with cups of espresso, boarding passes, keys, her iPhone." ~Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
http://www.avclub.com/review/kristen-stewart-browses-ghosts-olivier-assayas-unc-251630


"Review: Kristen Stewart Is Entrancing as a Haunted ‘Personal Shopper’

Kristen Stewart, who plays Maureen, has something in common with other stars of Mr. Assayas’s films, notably Maggie Cheung in “Irma Vep” and “Clean” — a quality of self-enclosed detachment that becomes its own peculiar form of intensity. She possesses an uncanny ability to turn her natural charisma into diffidence. You can’t take your eyes off her, even as she seems to be making every effort to deflect your attention, to obscure her radiance, to disappear onscreen.

This time she summons ghosts, thanks to a plot contrivance that makes the most of Ms. Stewart’s elusive magnetism." ~A.O. Scott
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/movies/personal-shopper-review-kristen-stewart.html?_r=0

Continued

"In Personal Shopper, Stewart is still playing an assistant, but she’s the star, and she moves through the film with the same disconsolate detachment that she played so well in Clouds of Sils Maria.

Stewart, who at this point has to be recognized as a major talent, brings the same brittle vulnerability she deployed so well in Clouds of Sils Maria and 2016’s Certain Women, vacillating between the cool self-confidence of her day job and the odd performativity of trying to talk to a ghost when standing alone in a room." ~David Sims
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/03/personal-shopper-kristen-stewart-review/518919/


"'Personal Shopper' review: Kristen Stewart sells it

It's a film of slow revelations, including Kristen Stewart's own.

For years, she'd been a slightly blank presence in films, a pallid screen on which audiences could project their own hopes and dreams. Was she a great actress? Or merely a great stand-in? For a long time, it seemed debatable.

She's been growing rapidly, though. And "Personal Shopper" allows Stewart an even wider range of emotions than most of her recent movies. She shows fear, yes. But also stammering nervousness, nagging grief, resignation. It's a full portrait and an often fascinating one." ~Stephen Whitty
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2017/03/personal_shopper_review_kristen_stewart_sells_it.html


"Kristen Stewart's 'Personal Shopper' will get under your skin

To her credit, Stewart makes this near-one-woman show not only watchable but truly anxiety-inducing in places." ~Sara Stewart
http://nypost.com/2017/03/07/kristen-stewarts-personal-shopper-will-get-under-your-skin/


"When one goes to see Kristen Stewart — among the most quicksilver of her generation's performers — in Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper, a shape-shifting, resolutely of-this-moment ghost story that features her in nearly every frame, one goes not to watch her act but refract.

I mean this as high praise.

There's a perverse thrill in watching Stewart, long an A-lister, so astutely inhabit the role of helpmate. Though deferential, Valentine doesn't hesitate to challenge Maria, delivering an eloquent defense of blockbusters when her employer slams industrial cinema — the very kind of moviemaking that made Stewart a star. ~Melissa Anderson
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/in-a-bizarre-ghost-story-kristen-stewart-haunts-herself-9743648

Continued

"Now as a frightful fashionista, Twilight’s Kristen Stewart terrifies, startles at Cannes

Some in the audience just did not expect the unconventional horror-movie trajectory of Personal Shopper, in which the actress, playing a rich woman’s go-fer, advances far beyond her vampire-franchise days.

The idea of Kristen Stewart playing a combination ghost chaser and fashionista sounds like something from the realm of comedy.

Yet in Personal Shopper, her new film which has electrified — make that terrified — the Cannes Film Festival, it’s an artful take on the horror movie genre. Representing a new advance as an actress for Stewart, 26, the film is far more frightening and cerebral than anything seen during her Twilight vampire franchise days.

Maureen does the fittings and fetching for her boss, working efficiently but with a vague sense of resentment. Stewart puts these competing impulses across with the most subtle of words and expressions, and also small acts of rebellion." ~Peter Howell
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2016/05/17/now-as-a-frlghtful-fashionista-twilights-kristin-stewart-terrifies-startles-at-cannes.html


"Thematically this is Olivier Assayas's darkest feature since Boarding Gate (2007), though it's much better, owing largely to Kristen Stewart's mesmeric performance as a young Parisian who works as personal shopper to a jet-set model and, in her spare time, communicates with the dead." ~J.R. Jones
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/personal-shopper/Film?oid=25691049


"Stewart’s work here isn’t as revelatory as her Sils Maria turn—there’s a sizable qualitative difference between bouncing off of Juliette Binoche and interacting with an iPhone 6—but her signature self-possession serves her well in this much creepier context." ~Mike D'Angelo
http://www.avclub.com/article/singular-kristen-stewart-ghost-story-joins-booed-c-236893


"Kristen Stewart is excellent in Olivier Assayas's magnificently unconventional Paris-set ghost story

Kristen Stewart has become one hell of an actress. The former 'Twilight' star was easily the standout feature of Assayas's last film, the slightly stilted study of actors 'Clouds of Sils Maria', quietly yanking the rug from under the feet of Juliette Binoche. Here, Stewart doesn't need to steal the film from anyone: she's in virtually every crisp frame of it, holding the camera's woozy gaze with her own quizzical, secretive stare and knotted body language.

Her performance is a galvanising human influence on the film, even as her character, introverted American-in-Paris Maureen, seems forever on the verge of voluntary evaporation.

And he's [Assayas] found an impeccably attuned muse in Stewart, who wears the film's curiosity with the same casually challenging stride that she does – in a key scene of sensual self-realisation – a jaw-dropping silk-organza bondage gown." ~Guy Lodge
https://www.timeout.com/london/film/personal-shopper

Continued

"Stewart is a terrific actress, her brittle exterior barely masking whatever tempest she or her characters are battling underneath, and here, the unpredictability of what she may do next is heightened by the fact that there are no rules for what can happen." ~Peter Debruge
http://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/personal-shopper-review-kristen-stewart-1201775572/


"For one thing, Kristen Stewart—who was in Assayas’s previous movie, “Clouds of Sils Maria” (2014)—is such a material presence. She’ll never be a lovable actress, but neither can she be ignored; she’s so on, and so bereft of peace. She fidgets, twitches, snaps at her lines as if they were candies, and mops her hand over her face in the hope of wiping her cares away. In a movie plagued by the dead, she is the proof of life." ~Anthony Lane
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/personal-shopper-and-frantz


"Working for the second time with French director Olivier Assayas, Stewart gives a superb performance in this mysterious, compelling story, balanced cleverly between the known and the unknown. Following their work on the excellent, Cesar Award-winning Clouds of Sils Maria, the pair revisits some of the same territory -- the world of elite celebrities and the regular people who work for them." ~Jeffrey M. Anderson
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/personal-shopper


"Kristen Stewart played an assistant to an older movie star in Olivier Assayas’ last film, Clouds of Sils Maria, wherein she proved that she could more than hold her own against Juliette Binoche, she built a believably confusing friendship-mentor chemistry battle with one of France’s all time greats. For her reteam with Assayas in Personal Shopper, Stewart has to hold our attention on screen almost entirely alone—acting opposite a ghost, a cell phone, or in an empty apartment—and she’s absolutely brilliant." ~Brian Formo
http://collider.com/kristen-stewart-personal-shopper-review/#poster


"It’s a textured perspective on the horror genre, matched beautifully by Kristen Stewart, who gives an astounding performance as a woman who’s not quite sure how badly she’s been torn apart. Watching her try to sew herself back together anyway is captivating." ~William Bibbiani
http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/1028413-tiff-2016-review-personal-shopper-haute-couture-horror#/slide/1

And the critical acclaim continues to pour in for Kristen as several reviews were submitted by film critics earlier today (March 16, 2017) praising her performance in Personal Shopper, whose Tomatometer ranking has increased to a Certified Fresh rating of 81% overall and 91% for top critics. Her are more excerpts from reviews of the top film critics:


"Kristen Stewart goes far beyond Bella in ‘Personal Shopper’

Kristen Stewart’s performance in this film is in a universe beyond the bite-the-lip, minimalist-schlock work she delivered in the “Twilight” movies, and this film masterfully delves into a number of genres, none of them light romantic comedy.

If you stopped paying attention to Kristen Stewart’s career arc after the “Twilight” films, you’ve missed a number of wonderful performances in a diverse and very fine array of films, from “On the Road” to “Clouds of Sils Maria” (her first partnering with director Assayas) to “American Ultra” to Woody Allen’s “Café Society.”

Stewart rises to the next level with her startlingly excellent work in “Personal Shopper.” She is in command of her character, sometimes almost casually so, keeping us focused on every little bit of physical business, every interesting choice of line readings, every moment of vulnerability that begins to bleed through the self-protective exterior. Stewart was the first American actress to win the Cesar (essentially the French Oscar) for her work here, and she deserves an Oscar nomination as well.

I can’t explain everything I saw in this film, but I was entertained and enthralled by every second of it." ~Richard Roeper
http://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/kristen-stewart-goes-far-beyond-bella-in-personal-shopper/



"Kristen Stewart (so good in Assayas’ previous film, “Clouds of Sils Maria”) plays Maureen, a young American in Paris whose habitual quiet masks a terrible loss — the recent death of her twin brother, Lewis.

And Stewart lets us see both Maureen’s tough shell (she has a brisk, poignant efficiency in her job) and the vulnerable heart that it guards. The jewelry, dresses and handbags seem trivial yet tangible; something solid that’s she’s drawn to, in contrast with the dark, airy mysteries swirling in the rest of her life." ~Moira MacDonald
http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/movies/personal-shopper-review-ghostly-shadows-drape-kristen-stewart-drama/

Continued


"'Personal Shopper' review: Kristen Stewart embodies woman haunted by grief

"No matter what sort of movie you're expecting from "Personal Shopper," you'll get it. You'll also contend with three others, and then the movie you first expected will turn inside out.

So all that awaits the receptive viewer, along with a dangling modifier of an ending guaranteed to satisfy virtually no one. Even so, this is one of the most intriguing pictures of the year, a genre-hopper of unusual gravity. It's also the latest proof that Kristen Stewart has the goods for a long-haul acting career, with all sorts of directors, playing all sorts of characters.

In many ways this is a tale of a young woman's agitated grief, pure and simple, and Stewart's wonderful and wholly persuasive as that woman.

Assayas is an artist with a natural aversion to extreme emotions, but the feeling in "Personal Shopper," fleeting yet distinct, gives Stewart everything she needs as an actress." ~Michael Phillips
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-personal-shopper-mov-rev-0313-20170313-column.html



"Kristen Stewart shines in supernatural thriller ‘Personal Shopper’

Actress Kristen Stewart may forever be associated with the popular “Twilight” franchise, movies that center on the growing pains of vampires and werewolves. Lately, however, she has shone in more serious fare from such directors as Woody Allen (“Cafe Society”) and Kelly Reichardt (“Certain Women”). With her latest film, French director Olivier Assayas’s “Personal Shopper,” Stewart returns to the kind of supernatural themes that made her a star at the multiplex — only this time it’s in a stylish, highly entertaining art-house thriller.

Assayas has always worked at a consistently high level of excellence, but “Personal Shopper” is his most vital film in years, at times recalling the verve of his 1996 breakthrough “Irma Vep” (whose star, Maggie Cheung, Stewart evokes whenever she gets on a motorcycle)." ~Pat Padua
https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/kristen-stewart-shines-in-supernatural-thriller-personal-shopper/2017/03/16/1e1f72d4-0993-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?utm_term=.e67495c8a5fc


"As in her previous movie with Assayas, Stewart bristles with intelligence beneath the facade of an aimless millennial. She’s the perfect stand-in for Assayas — he wrote the script specifically for her — giving him a young person’s view of our cultural “now” while allowing him to coolly observe its weird mix of fame, media and technology. (Many of the movie’s most intense scenes involve just Stewart and her iPhone.)" ~Rafer Guzman
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/personal-shopper-review-kristen-stewart-in-psychological-thriller-1.13270549