Go to timescolonist.com/VFF for updates. Ratings are out of five stars.
Personal Shopper
Where: Vic Theatre
When: Tonight, 9 p.m.; Sun., 1:30 p.m.
Rating: Two and a half stars
Give French filmmaker Olivier Assayas credit for generating as much tension as he does from a sequence in which Kristen Stewart, playing an insufferable fashion model’s assistant and personal shopper, taps out text messages on her cellphone to a mysterious digital stalker during a train ride from Paris to London.
While the sequence is too protracted, it’s a suspenseful highlight in an otherwise disappointing, albeit intermittently spooky and eye-catching psychological thriller. Stewart, who impressively played a similar role — a film star’s personal assistant — in last year’s Clouds of Sils Maria turns in an irritatingly mannered performance this time out as a sullen, spooked young American in Paris.
Also a practising medium, she divides her time between haute couture and mourning the death of her twin brother, who apparently promised he’d reach out to her from the afterlife.
What begins as an intriguing ghost story laced with a sense of quiet foreboding degenerates into a muddled, millennial-targeted horror film that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
As flimsy as some of the lingerie Stewart strips down to, this curiosity piece is a listless hybrid of elements that simultaneously recall films by David Lynch and Zalman King.
Saint Amour
Where: Cineplex Odeon
When: Tonight, 9:45 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.
Rating: two and a half stars
The assumption that a film must be praiseworthy just because it stars Gerard Depardieu is obliterated in this fitfully funny, increasingly tiresome French variation on Sideways, in which he appears to have phoned in his performance as an aging, recently widowed farmer who hires a cocky young Parisian cabbie to take him on a male-bonding road trip through France’s wine regions with Bruno (Benoit Poelvoorde), his self-loathing, sexually frustrated son. Despite some outrageous comic interludes and absurd sexual encounters, this redneck buffoons-on-the-loose lark is annoyingly aimless. It’s also laden with bizarre contrivances and clichés that feebly contrast country and city living. Without a strong narrative foundation to link a succession of silly sight gags that give way to misplaced pathos, this meditation on wine, women and midlife crises prematurely self-destructs.
What: Weirdos
Where: SilverCity
When: Tonight, 9 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m.
Rating: three and a half stars
What’s not to love about Canuck hipster Bruce McDonald’s return to a genre he’s a master of — the indie road movie with a distinctly Canadian flavour and endearingly peculiar characters. Reuniting with screenwriter Daniel MacIvor, with whom he collaborated on VFF’s 2010 hit Trigger, McDonald has crafted a slight but quirky and ironic comedy-drama. Shot in gorgeous black-and-white by Becky Parsons, it chronicles the journey of Kit and Alice, two Novia Scotia teenagers who hitchhike from Antigonish to Sydney during the summer of 1976 while the American Bicentennial is being celebrated stateside. Although this is a modest achievement, boomers in particular should get a real kick out of its authentic period costumes, furnishings, pop-culture references (look for the Mother, Juggs and Speed movie marquee) and flashbacks, including a score rife with nostalgia-inducing rock gems. The film’s Maritime beauty is offset by period hits from musicians such as Edward Bear, the Stampeders and Murray McLauchlan, whose Down by the Henry Moore is a song you won’t be able to get out of your head after the closing credits roll. There’s even some Harry Nilsson thrown in to conjure up a Midnight Cowboy vibe. What stands out most, however, are the naturalistic performances, particularly from Julia Sarah Stone, a fresh and compelling new talent with retro flair, and Molly Parker, who infuses her over-the-top portrayal of Kit’s dysfunctional mother with poignancy. Pity McDonald didn’t ditch a gimmick that might have sounded good on paper but misfires on screen — a recurring spirit guide in the form of Andy Warhol.