Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Personal Shopper
2016 · Olivier Assayas · Personal Shopper on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Listen for ordinary sounds standing in for a score. (sound)
The film runs without conventional music for most of its length, leaving doors, footsteps, an empty house's hum, and a notification chime as the only cues you get.
Payoff: You have to decide for yourself whether every sound is a clue or nothing at all.
Notice the camera follow her without ever hurrying. (camera)
Le Saux tracks Maureen through streets, boutiques, and stairways in long, patient takes, leaving a little air around her that reads as loneliness rather than intimacy.
Payoff: The camera keeps its distance the same way everyone in her life does.
Watch her put on clothes she isn't allowed to touch. (staging)
Forbidden from trying anything on, Maureen dresses in her employer's harness and sheer dress alone in front of a mirror, filmed like something closer to a ritual than a fitting.
Payoff: Putting on someone else's clothes becomes her only way of trying to feel something. In the reading: the gest. The reading calls this a gest: a posture that makes a whole hierarchy, who is allowed to touch what, visible without a word.
Notice pauses and typing indicators left in the texts. (cutting)
The message exchanges keep the actual lag of a real conversation instead of compressing replies, the opposite of how most films edit texting for pace.
Payoff: The waiting itself is the scene, not the dead time a normal edit would cut out.
Watch her face when there's no one else in the room. (performance)
Stewart carries long stretches alone, registering possibility without committing to belief, restless in stillness in a way that keeps even quiet scenes tense.
Payoff: Most of the performance is a face deciding whether to believe something, over and over. In the reading: potisign (icon of power). The reading calls this a potisign: a face gathering force at a threshold, before it commits to any reaction.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the space just outside every frame. What's missing from the shot is usually the point.