6A — Monday, April 10, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Directed by Olivier Assayas
(“Clouds of Sils Maria”), “Personal
Shopper” is the story of Maureen
(Kristen
Stewart,
“Certain
Women”), an American expat
living in Paris and working for
a wealthy model as a personal
shopper and assistant. Maureen
is grappling with the recent death
of her twin brother, Lewis, of
a genetic heart condition. The
siblings believed that they both had
connections to the spirit world, so
after his death, Maureen believes
Lewis is attempting to contact her
from beyond the grave. She also
begins receiving messages from an
unknown number, someone who
knows intimate details of her life,
and is strangely transfixed by them.
The film is difficult to categorize.
It’s at once a tense psychological
thriller, an understated exploration
of grief and loneliness and a horror
movie. Really, the film is a study
in tonal shifts, some of which
are more effective than others.
Assayas attempts to balance these
shifts by grounding the story in a
kind of bland, muted affectation
that encompasses the entire film.
Characters speak at a low mumble,
the visuals are bleak and graded
grey, the edits are slow and blunt.
The result is a deceptively simple
surface that hides just how much is
happening tonally and within the
internal lives of the characters.
“Personal Shopper” takes a
rather unconventional and tricky
approach to storytelling. At a quick
glance, it may appear meandering
and plotless, but in reality, all of the
drama happens within Stewart’s
Maureen. It’s tightly focused on
tracking her emotional progression
as she tries to grapple with all of
these feelings, which Stewart,
who thrives in muted tones
and
understated
characters, conveys
in
a
brilliant
performance.
Maureen is a truly
perfect
character
for Stewart — the kind of person
whose stony and careful exterior is
just a fragile cover for the deep well
of feelings underneath.
Despite
Stewart’s
strength
as
an
actress
and
Assayas’s
clear understanding of plot and
character mechanics, “Personal
Shopper” is, well, a bit of a slog
to get through. For one thing, it’s
self-indulgent: For example, about
halfway through the film, we’re
treated to a nearly ten-minute
sequence of Maureen anxiously
answering and receiving texts
from the unknown number on a
train, mostly shot in tight shots of
the phone itself. It’s so long and
slow that you can’t help thinking
there had to have been a better way
to convey this information.
Even though its drama is well-
articulated through a carefully
considered character arc, the movie
still feels slow and meandering. It
seems more concerned with being
artful than with being empathetic.
That is, there are some moments
of genuine tension in the movie,
but those moments are few and
far between. We’re left with
watching a character experience
a lot of emotions,
but nothing in the
story apart from the
character
herself
exists to enhance
those
feelings.
I
don’t suppose that it’s a particularly
bad thing for a story to rely on an
actor’s performance, but “Personal
Shopper” would be absolutely
nothing
if
not
for
Stewart’s
charisma. There are no external
conflicts, no ways for the audience
to feel what Maureen is feeling —
only ways for us to see it. To make
a story resonate, storytellers need
to work a lot harder than simply
telling us what happened. As it
stands, “Personal Shopper” gives
its audience no reason to care. It’s
a shame, too — it could have been
beautiful.
ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer
LES FILMS DU LOSANGE
Still from new film, “Personal Shopper”
‘Shopper’ is technically
perfect, underwhelming
Beautiful film “Personal Shopper” proves empty in meaning
“Personal Shopper”
Les Films du Losange
Michigan Theater
‘Pure’ a big undertaking
that brings mixed results
Father John Misty returns with poetic brilliance and pretension
Two years ago, Father John
Misty (originally known as Josh
Tillman) proved his worth with I
Love You, Honeybear. The album
was a fully formed and emotional
follow-up to Fear Fun, his first
enterprise as “Father John Misty”
since parting ways with the Fleet
Foxes. Misty’s newest release,
Pure Comedy, is less musically
interesting than most of what he
has done up until this point, but
it has enough lyrical substance
to keep his fan base happily
questioning
the
meaning
of
life and mulling over the many
shortcomings of humanity for as
long as they please.
Pure Comedy starts off on a
strong note. “Total Entertainment
Forever” stands out in particular,
calling into question the creepily
dominant role that technology
has come to play in our lives. The
song approaches the subject from
an eerie angle, and closes off with
a strong stanza predicting how
someday historians will find us “In
our homes / Plugged into our hubs
/ Skin and bones / A frozen smile
on every face.” The closing line,
“This must have been a wonderful
place,” hammers in the sinking
feeling that the rest of the song has
been building up: the sense that
our elaborate technologies are only
keeping us busy and distracted,
while history trickles away all
around us.
Pure Comedy sees its strongest
moments when it is exploring
messages like this, and to be
fair, the album does a lot of
exploring.
Questions
of
the
validity of millennial life and
the pervasiveness of corruption
ebb and flow through songs like
“Things It Would Have Been
Helpful to Know Before the
Revolution,” “Birdie” and “Two
Wildly Different Perspectives,”
and
manifest
in
their
most
memorable form in “Leaving
LA,” a thirteen-minute-long self-
described “diatribe” that sums up a
lot of the main points of the album.
It’s melodically repetitive and
doesn’t quite need to be thirteen
minutes long, but it does include
some striking and well-crafted
scenes, like a van cruising past
commercial billboards on its way
out of L.A., and a child (presumably
the young Misty) choking on a
piece of watermelon candy in a
JCPenney.
For all of Misty’s
lyrical
passion,
he
sometimes
overshoots
his
target. Not all of his
insights are exactly
revelations;
in
“When the God of Love Returns,”
for instance, he remarks on how
the true hell is human nature,
and how “this place is savage and
unjust,” both of which are fair
messages, although not really
new ones. In addition, “Ballad
of a Dying Man” notes how we
leave this world “as clueless as we
came,” at the end of a song that
aligns Misty’s perspective with
that of a dying man, even though
he likely has never been one. Misty
is an intelligent songwriter, but
he can get carried away with his
own language, just enough that it
fails slightly to match up with a lot
of the substance that would have
been behind it.
The album also doesn’t take on
very much in the way of melodic
experimentation. Misty proved in
I Love You, Honeybear that he was
able to explore musically within
an album, and there are ways in
which he tries to take this in a new
direction on Pure Comedy. “Birdie”
makes for a cool, synthetic blend
of styles, featuring electronics,
piano and echoey vocals, and “The
Memo” features an interesting
change
in
tone
toward
the
end of the song, as well as the
incorporation of automated voices.
The penultimate track, “So I’m
Growing Old on Magic Mountain,”
also finds a gentle, artful tone
with which to start closing off the
album. However, since the album
starts out with some variety and
then regains its depth toward the
end, it would have been nice to see
more inventiveness throughout its
duration. This is true in particular
because Misty so clearly fashions
the journey of the album as a
sort of Odyssean
exploration
of
the
experience
of humanity, and
since humanity can
look like so many
different things, the
music of the album
could have reflected some more
variety.
Misty clearly understood the
gravity of his undertaking, since
the album is nearly an hour and
fifteen minutes long. He genuinely
wanted to make sure that he
was successfully saying what he
wanted to say with Pure Comedy,
and really, this is when it all comes
down to the listener. Misty indulges
himself in going a little overboard
with his own language, and an
album that tries so hard to impress
lyrically could have benefited
from a little more attention to the
innovative potential of the music
itself. However, he clearly cares
about the messages he is trying to
get across in terms of consumer
culture and general reliance upon
entertainment, and this sentiment
does come through in his lyrics. In
spite of the album’s shortcomings,
anyone who is already a fan of
Misty’s poetic habits and the less
romantic, more philosophical side
of his songwriting will find at least
a few key messages to appreciate in
Pure Comedy.
LAURA DZUBAY
Daily Arts Writer
Pure Comedy
Father John Misty
Sub Pop
ALBUM REVIEW
Where women play a role
in the gender-bent theatre
Writer Eli Rallo explores the blurring lines of gender and theatre
The future of the world is
female. The future of art is female.
The future of theatre is female.
When I was a naive eight-
year-old interested in theatre and
music, my parents enrolled me in
a theatre program at a local dance
studio. We were doing “Hairspray
Jr.” and did not have enough boys
in the cast. Because of this, I was
cast as the charismatic, titular
male host of the “Corny Collins
Show,” Corny Collins. In the
world of theatre, this is called
“genderbending.”
Genderbent
casting occurs in one of two ways:
Either the role is changed to suit
the gender of the actor or the actor
plays the opposite gender.
In my case, at eight years old, I
was playing the opposite gender
— slicked back hair, a tiny suit,
Converse high tops, and I looked
like, well, a little boy. At this age,
I didn’t have the mental capacity
to
really
think
about
what
genderbent casting meant and
how conversations about gender
have really made a home in the
theatre. However, as I’ve grown
up, thinking about that moment in
my life — in which I took on a male
role without a single comment
or complaint — has led me to
discover an interest with gender
and casting in the theatre.
Genderbent
theatre
casting
began in the time of Shakespeare,
when women were not a part of
theatre, which led to men dressing
in women’s clothes and playing
the female roles. It is so intriguing
to me that one of the most
liberating forms of expression was
once confined to the patriarchy in
a completely nonsensical way.
As as kid, I was playing a
male role because the director
had no choice. But now, as an
eighteen-year-old in a constantly
progressing world, the choice to
have a woman occupy a historically
male role defies an array of norms.
It provides for thought-provoking
conversation; it is not just a choice
made out of necessity, but for a
myriad of other reasons.
Today, it is becoming more
common to see women playing
male roles as social criticism or
artistic choice by the director of
the piece. To me, it is stunning
and important to see a female
“Hamlet”
(Diane
Venora
in
Joseph Papp’s adaptation), a role
originally created to be played
by a male. Seeing a female as this
strong leading character changes
the message of the show and
provides a new context to its well-
known plot.
There has been controversy
surrounding genderbent casting
for years. The best example of this
can be found through the original
1954 Broadway production of the
musical “Peter Pan.”
Ever since Mary Martin took
the stage as the iconic lead role,
women have been cast as Peter.
This raises the debate whether
the cross-gender casting of Peter
Pan reflects the movement toward
equality of women in society or
if it reflects the old concept that
suggests a boy who is effeminate
and can’t grow up has to be played
by a female.
Due to these controversies,
greater than just the necessity
for more gender bent casting
in professional theatre is the
necessity for more strong, resilient
female lead roles. If the world sees
an array of female characters in
theatre holding important jobs,
carrying big decisions and being
the catalyst for action instead of
timid stock characters or damsels
in distress, there may be no need
to bend male roles to make social
statements.
Until the theatre community
recognizes the power of a female
driven plot or a female lead,
directors must continue to look
at casting in a way that seeks
to inspire the female, not leave
her to the same types of roles
she is “expected” to play. This
genderbent style of casting seeks
to show the audience that women
can do anything men can do.
ELI RALLO
Daily Arts Writer
FILM REVIEW
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
Read more at MichiganDaily.