Olivier Assayas

These filmmakers took their own films and updated them.

After he lit up last year’s Cannes Film Festival with Kristen Stewart starrer Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas is at it again, this time with an adaptation of a book about Cuban spies in America during the 1990’s called Wasp Network.

The latest Kristen Stewart project to finally hit our shores is Personal Shopper, a kind of ghost story that made waves at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival last year. Stewart and director Olivier Assayas previously collaborated on 2015’s fantastic Clouds of Sils Maria, and their second project together has been pretty divisive, but Stewart made our Best of TIFF list for completely carrying this movie all on her own. A new trailer heralds the film’s US release, which opens next month.

I didn’t get to review Personal Shopper out of the Toronto Film Festival, so here’s the short short version: I liked it! Quite a bit actually; Kristen Stewart gives an outstanding performance as a young American living in Paris, who’s desperate to make contact with a ghost, and specifically with the ghost of her dead twin brother. To fund her quest, Stewart also works as the personal shopper for a fashion icon and socialite. It’s an unusual mix of elements, but a deeply engrossing one, with Stewart nodding at her celebrity status (and perhaps the loneliness of a certain kind of isolating fame) in interesting ways.

Kristen Stewart has done very well distancing herself from the Twilight saga with a series of roles proving her worth as a very talented actress — Still Alice, Camp X-Ray and Clouds of Sils Maria have showcased Stewart’s dramatic chops, but it’s the latter in which she gave her most impressive performance to date. So it’s definitely good news that the actress is reuniting with her Clouds of Sils Maria director for another project.