Past Event26 Jul - 27 Jul 2016

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The Civic

Film

Olivier Assayas shared Best Director Award at Cannes this year for his open-ended hybrid of ghost story, thriller and high-end sociological observation. Kristen Stewart stars – in almost every frame – as Maureen, a young American woman in Paris, unimpressed by her fashion-world milieu and haunted by the spirit of her dead twin brother.

“Amid all the shifting mirrored surfaces and hazy ambiguities of Olivier Assayas’s bewitching, brazenly unconventional ghost story, this much can be said with certainty: Kristen Stewart has become one hell of an actress...

An haute couture clothes buyer and general dogsbody to an insufferable A-list celebrity, practising medium Maureen is haunted, in all senses, by the recent death of her twin brother. Stalking his former abode at night seeking a final communication, she encounters a spirit or two – but whose? And are they following her, or are the insidiously instructive, anonymous texts that start invading her phone from another amorphous entity?

As Maureen’s already fragile composure begins to fray, it’s hard to tell if she’s plagued more by absence or uncanny presence: even her boss is barely visible to her, leaving a trail of curt notes and messages in her wake…

For the preservation of enjoyment, no more should be revealed about the film’s gliding, glassy sashay through multiple, splintered genres and levels of consciousness – except to say that Assayas, working in the high-concept, game-playing vein of his Irma Vep and demonlover, is in shivery control of it all.” - Guy Lodge, Time Out

Personal Shopper

France 2016 

105 mins
CinemaScope/DCP

Director: Olivier Assayas

Producer: Charles Gillibert

Screenplay: Olivier Assayas, Christelle Meaux

Photography: Yorick Le Saux

Editor: Marion Monnier

Production designer: François-Renaud Labarthe

Costume designer: Jürgen Doering

With: Kristen Stewart (Maureen), Lars Eidinger (Ingo), Sigrid Bouaziz (Lara), Anders Danielsen Lie (Erwin), Ty Olwin (Gary), Hammou Graïa (policeman), Nora Von Waldstätten (Kyra), Benjamin Biolay (Victor Hugo), Audrey Bonnet (Cassandre), Pascal Rambert (Jérôme), Aurélia Petit (Chanel press agent), Olivia Ross (London couture house press agent), Thibault Lacroix (Paris couture house press agent), Calypso Valois (photo shoot assistant), Benoit Peverelli (photographer), Dan Belhassen (cardiologist), Léo Haidar (Kyra’s lawyer), Mickaël Laplack (hotel receptionist), Vianney Duault (Cartier salesman), Célia Ouallouche (Louboutin receptionist), Khaled Rawahi (Oman driver), Julie Rouart (saleswoman)

Festivals: Cannes (In Competition) 2016

Awards: Best Director, Cannes Film Festival 2016

For tickets and details about films at other venues, please visit the New Zealand International Film Festival website.

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