We’ve been celebrating the year in film for a few weeks now, and as we reach the midpoint, it felt like the right time to unveil our list of the Best Films Of 2015.

Unlimited Potential: Olivier Assayas on “Personal Shopper” . Though her character was deeply flawed, Stewart infused it with a palpable angst that any heartsick adolescent would find relatable. Yet many critics remained skeptical of her range until she portrayed the assistant to an aging actress (Juliette Binoche) in Olivier Assayas’ richly enjoyable 2. Clouds of Sils Maria.” Her chemistry with Binoche was a joy to behold, as was her scenes opposite Chlo. This role proved to be a turning point in Stewart’s career, resulting in her becoming the first American actress to receive a C.

Now she has re- teamed with Assayas for “Personal Shopper,” an entrancingly spooky picture that casts her as another assistant (the titular shopper for a celebrity), only this time, she is placed front and center. Coping with her brother’s recent death, Stewart’s character of Maureen begins to receive text messages that appear to have been sent from her deceased sibling.

Advertisement. Assayas won the Best Director prize at the 2. Cannes Film Festival, tying with “Graduation” director Cristian Mungiu, while Stewart received more glowing reviews. During last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, Assayas was in buoyant spirits when he spoke with Roger. Ebert. com about the poetry of texting, the beauty of the film’s much- publicized nude scene and the “unlimited potential” of his leading lady. At last night’s Toronto premiere of “Personal Shopper,” you said that the picture is as much Kristen’s film as it is your film.

There are some movies, even great movies, that have a lead role that you could imagine being inhabited by another actor without it affecting the core or the fabric of the film. In the case of “Personal Shopper,” whatever this film is about is defined by the way Kristen appropriates it. As a filmmaker, you have to somehow frame that dynamic, and you have to channel it. Here, Kristen’s on her own, so it’s not so much about channeling. It’s about being in sync, about being completely aware of her instincts, and being able to adapt to the way she is appropriating the material. She is the one person who is there within the shot, and she’s determining her own pacing as well as the way that the emotions build up within her. Was the story fully formed to an extent prior to filming, or did you find the narrative during production?

I was finding it as I was going along. Usually the one question you get asked when you make movies is, “What were you trying to say? Why did you make this film?” Usually I don’t have an answer because I have no idea.

Yet I often have some kind of premise that I stay faithful to throughout the process of making a film. In this case, I wanted to make a movie that had to do with the tension between the world we live in—our jobs and the material world—and the world of our imagination, the world of our dreams and fantasies. We live in such a materialistic world, and because of that, we think that the important part of our lives is the material world. But in reality, we experience life to a stronger extent in our imaginations, even though we can hardly verbalize or represent what it is that we envision. Movies can help capture that experience. I was not sure how I would get there, but I knew more or less where I planned to get.

Advertisement. I’ve never seen ghostly apparitions visualized in quite the way they are here. You get a sense that we are seeing a mental projection of what is going on in Maureen’s mind.

I was not sure how to do it. It was my first experience working with CGI, which is not my world at all, so I kind of had to feel my way into that. My visual reference was the spiritualist photography of the late 1.

Mediums were commissioning photos of whatever they imagined was happening during seances. According to the transcripts of seances, mediums did experience visions, and through the superimposition of photographed images, they found a way of representing what they imagined they had seen. I thought that was a good model for the spirit images in this film. I was especially struck by the shot of an apparition moving stealthily behind Stewart in the garden. That shot was totally essential. I rarely have a notion of how I am going to shoot a specific scene when I am writing it, but in this case, I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like. We ended up building the entire house and garden according to my needs for that specific shot.

Lars Eidinger, Actor: Clouds of Sils Maria. Lars Eidinger was born on January 21, 1976 in Berlin, Germany. He is an actor and composer, known for Clouds of Sils Maria. An interview with Olivier Assayas, writer/director of "Personal Shopper.". Directed by Olivier Assayas. With Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz, Lars Eidinger. A film star comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable. IFC Films is an American film production and distribution company based in New York City. It is an offshoot of IFC owned by AMC Networks. It distributes independent.

The sound design greatly enhances the film’s psychological study of its protagonist, bringing us closer to her sensory experience. Oftentimes in genre filmmaking, you make a ghost film and it’s covered with music, particularly electronic music conveying a sense of menace. I knew I would never use that because it would obviously reduce the film to its genre elements, which are there, but they are merely one aspect of the film, and certainly not the most important aspect. Since I was not going to use music, noises were going to be even more crucial. What I realized during postproduction is that when you take away music, the tiny, more nuanced sounds are the scariest. You shouldn’t make them too precise or too loud. On the contrary, the eeriness is heightened when you hear small things that give you a hint of what’s potentially going on.

You end up feeling like Maureen in that sense. Advertisement. The scene where Maureen changes into her boss’ clothes has a rather beautiful quality to it, in part because of the Marlene Dietrich song, which is heard in its entirety. I think all filmmakers are always a bit shy when they are dealing with nude scenes and with how an actress is going to react to them. There is always some kind of voyeuristic dimension to those scenes, whether you want it there or not, and that is not what my movies are about.

My movies are hopefully about reality, about giving as much flesh and blood to a specific situation. Kristen understands that entirely. I would’ve understood if she had told me, “This is weird ground. I don’t feel comfortable.” I would’ve respected it.

But throughout the process of making this film with Kristen, I knew from the first day onward that she wasn’t going to be shy and that she was going to go all the way. Even when I was like, . In regards to the scene where she takes off her clothes and puts on her boss’s dress, she was always going to do it. I was a bit scared that the scene would be too long, but Kristen is such a dancer. She has such an incredible sense of body language that makes her movement in a scene fascinating.

I thought I was going to cut the scene, use a few bits and pieces and patch them together. Eventually I realized that if I keep it in real time, it’s actually beautiful. Hd Video 720P Grandma (2015).

She has a way of occupying space that is unlike any other actress. If you give her something like this where she has a million practical things to do, she’s going to absorb them and she’s going to make something astonishing out of it. The beauty of that shot—which is extremely long—is really a tribute to her skills. With the inclusion of music, the scene is like a dance, in a way. Absolutely. To me, music is a process of trial and error. I had no idea if I was going to use music at all—to be honest, I did not think I would.

I thought music might spoil the scene, and then just for the sake of trying, I sampled various tracks which totally did not work. All of a sudden, I bumped into this Marlene Dietrich song, “Das Hobellied,” which I had wanted to use in the film back when I was writing it.

I had no idea where I would use it, and it suddenly made complete sense for this scene. It gave the moment its meaning, and through the collision between images and music, you can’t even imagine the scene without that song. Advertisement. On several occasions, the film utilizes fade- outs instead of cutting to black. I’m attracted to fades because of their musical quality.

It gives the audience a sense that they are moving to another chapter. It provides them, and the story, with breathing space.

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