ELLE (B+) - I could watch Isabelle Huppert watch paint dry. And she certainly carries Paul Verhoeven's new thriller about as far as it deserves to go.
Yes, that Paul Verhoeven, the provocateur behind such '90s cultural touchstones as "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls." Verhoeven has matured, apparently, and here he strives for some Hitchcock cred, but he falls short, landing in Brian De Palma territory.
Huppert plays Michele, a video-game entrepreneur who, at the beginning of the film, gets raped by a masked intruder in her home. Michele, however, shrugs off the attack and doesn't want to bother involving the police. With that Huppert mask of hers, she stoically soldiers on. She casually drops news of the attack at a dinner out with her ex and her business partner, Anna (Anne Consigney from TV's "The Returned"), as if she were just ordering the next appetizer.
But Michele starts sizing up potential suspects, including a couple of young employees, particularly one who likes to tweak the prototype for the latest violent video game with images of Michele's face, for in-house amusement. Thus begins a slow burn of a whodunit, layered with levels of paranoia and misdirection.
Michele flirts with her married neighbor Patrick (Laurent Lafitte). At a dinner party she hosts, she sits next to Patrick and lets her foot wander to his crotch under the table. The look she gives him, with left-eyebrow cocked in mock innocence, is classic Huppert. Meantime, Michele steadfastly tries to put the attack behind her, while seeming to channel her energies in the detective work.
But the attack gets replayed in her mind. And sometimes the circumstances change. In one iteration she overcomes her assailant. Is that her memory faltering? Is she imagining what might have been? Eventually, the viewer begins to question whether the attack actually occurred the way it was first depicted, and whether Michele isn't perhaps playing a more sophisticated psychological game here.
Is she dead inside? She shamelessly has an affair with Anna's husband, but dumps him early on, only to spill the beans to Anna, needlessly harming her partner. "Shame isn't a strong enough emotion to stop us doing anything at all," Michele rationalizes to Anna. "Believe me."
What should be a taut thriller turns into a lumbering trompe l'oeil who-cares-who-done-it, dragging beyond the two-hour mark. Verhoeven's plot twists feel like cheats, and his style is surprisingly flat. He lazily leans on several spinnings of Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" as a tired soundtrack flourish.
None of the actors can really keep up with Huppert, making Michele's psychological maneuverings -- whether for grins or for self-preservation -- seem cruel and misplaced. Too much here just doesn't add up. For a better version of Huppert doing a psycho-sexual psych-out, try Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher" from 2002.
PERSONAL SHOPPER (C+) - When Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart teamed up last, for "Clouds of Sils Maria," they put us to sleep. With a solid nap under our belt for a rainy-day matinee, we stayed awake for "Personal Shopper," but still left the theater in a fog.
Stewart ("Adventureland," "Certain Women") plays Maureen, a morose millennial living in Paris, serving as a personal shopper for a celebrity while mourning the loss of her twin brother, whose spirit she desperately seeks to connect with. Maureen spends time at her brother's creaky old house out in the countryside, a mansion straight out of central casting.
Maureen rarely sees her employer, Kyra (Nora von Waldstatten), and has plenty of time to mouse around the old house and to interact with her brother's girlfriend, Lara (Sigrid Bouaziz), who has moved on quickly with a new boyfriend. Then Maureen starts getting text messages from an unknown number, from someone who apparently knows her comings and goings and who almost certainly is not the ghost of her brother.
The mystery here is disappointingly easy to figure out. It's as if Assayas ("Carlos," "Something in the Air") isn't even trying to create suspense. And while Stewart can be quite effective in certain roles, she is not one to enliven a movie with her natural charisma. In fact, she can be a walking Hipster Bingo card. Keep track every time she: nervously touches her face; runs her hand through her boyish haircut; texts; lights up a cigarette; converses without making eye contact; Skypes with her boyfriend; and rides her scooter through the streets of Paris (a lot).
It can make for a pretty dull 105 minutes. Assayas struggles to conjure up spirits with some bush-league Tim Burton effects. The story is just wafer thin here, bordering on laughable at times. (At one point, Maureen, frustrated by the signs she perceives are coming from the after-world, stares at a plumbing fixture that seems to have a mind of its own and says to it, "I'm gonna need more from you!") And not even the discovery of a brutal murder can raise the viewer's pulse.
The ending is heartfelt, evoking a rare flush of emotion in Maureen, gorgeously shot in Oman. But it can't make up for an hour and a half of moodiness from the Ghost and Mrs. Meh.
BONUS TRACK
The best part of "Personal Shopper" is the song over the closing credits, "Track of Time" by Anna von Hausswolff:
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