- Directed by Olivier Assayas
- Written by Olivier Assayas
- Stars Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSqMpkGOW9g
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was slow paced but it had enough overlapping things going on to collectively make it interesting. Travel, angst, loss, murder, spiritualism, luxury shopping, mystery, and ghosts. We liked it quite a bit.
Spoilery Synopsis
Maureen unpadlocks the big metal gate out in the country and she’s given keys to the big mansion there. It’s big and mostly empty inside, with lots of dust. It’s dark at night, and there doesn’t seem to be any electricity. She gets creeped out by sounds and calls, “Lewis? Is that you?”
In the morning, X stops by, and Maureen says she felt something, but it wasn’t close enough to contact last night. Maureen just isn’t sure, but the people who are buying the house need to know if it’s benevolent or not. The clients talk about abstract art, and a woman who painted abstract art before abstract art was invented.
Maureen then goes to a fashion place and picks up a bunch of clothes for Kyra. She then goes to another store and buys more stuff; it’s all very expensive. She drops the stuff off at Kyra’s place and picks up an envelope of money. Then she goes home to read a book on that same abstract artist, Hilma af Klint, who was also a medium. She watches videos on her phone about the same people and also about old-time spiritualists.
She gets a call from Gary, and she whines about her job. She likes living in Paris, but the shopping job is so monotonous. He’s working IT for the embassy in Muscat, Oman.
Maureen gets a heart ultrasound. She has a heart murmur, just like her twin brother, Lewis. That’s what killed Lewis, but that was rare and unusual; she should be fine.
Maureen talks to Ingo, Kyra’s “other man” at Kyra’s place. Kyra’s busy arguing about gorillas on the phone and doesn’t want to talk to Maureen about leather pants. Ingo offers Maureen a job with his magazine, but she’s not interested. Maureen admits that she’s only staying in Paris hoping to hear from her dead brother; she is a medium, after all.
That night, Maureen goes back to Lewis’s mansion and tries to contact him again. The bathtub starts running water by itself. “I’m gonna need more from you,” she says. She sees a ghostly light, and she and it chase each other around the house. “You’re not my brother,” she yells. She runs to the door and leaves the place immediately.
Maureen goes to the train station and buys a ticket to London. She then gets some cryptic text messages on her phone. Could it be Lewis? [If it was Lewis, texting on a phone, why would he be so enigmatic about his answers?] Once in London, she buys more clothes for Kyra. She then gets on the train back to Paris. The mystery texting continues throughout the entire trip, and she still has no idea who he is.
She drops off the new purchases at Kyra’s house, and she makes herself at home. She tries on some of Kyra’s clothes, something she’s forbidden to do. The next day, she tells Lara about the ghost she saw in the house and that it’s gone now; the couple is going to buy the house now. Lara was Lewis’s girlfriend, and now she’s ready to move on too.
Maureen watches a documentary about how Victor Hugo used to talk to spirits; it involved a pedestal table that rocked back and forth in code. For several days, she continues texting back and forth with her mystery man.
She picks up some jewelry and drops them off at Kyra’s, but she finds the place a bloody mess– Kyra is dead on the floor. She leaves in a panic but eventually calls the police. A detective questions her, and he knows that she spent the night at Kyra’s last night.
The man on the phone wants to know if she told the police about his texts. She goes home and finds the jewelry from Cartier… that she knows she left at Kyra’s house. That’s not gonna look at all suspicious. The phone guy texts that he’s coming up to her room. Someone she doesn’t see slides a note under her door. Could it be a ghost?
The police try to arrest Ingo for the murder, and he shoots at them and runs away. He eventually is caught, confesses to everything, and the case is closed. She goes to stay at Lara’s house, where she meets Erwin, one of Lewis’s coworkers and Lara’s new boyfriend. He says she needs to move on and let Lewis go. We see a ghost behind her breaking a coffee cup.
Maureen flies to Oman, where she stays at Gary’s place; he’s away for a few days. He leaves her a note to meet him in the mountains. When she gets there, she sees a glass float across the room and smash, just like it did at Lara’s place. “Lewis? Are you here?” She doesn’t think it’s Lewis. “Who are you?” “Or is it just me?”
Commentary
The texting back and forth goes on and on for far too long. Any reasonable person would have blocked the mystery texter and his stupid games.
It’s very slow moving. There was the plot with the shopping and the murder, and also the plot about Lewis’s death. Then there’s the plot about the ghost and about her being a medium.
That was a very vague ending. Was Ingo the man who was texting her all along? If not, who was? Who was the ghost? Was Lewis just messing with her? We definitely did see ghosts, so it’s not all in her head, so what’s really going on here? Did that business with the abstract art impact the story at all?
It’s a little vague and artsy, but I still liked it.